A Spoonful Won't Do
by blueandblack
Summary: New York. New Haven. New Rachel. New Quinn.
1. Chapter 1

Quinn Fabray does not like airplanes.

It's not that she's scared exactly – you've got more chance of getting hit by a car getting to work, and what's the point of worrying once you're on your way?

It's not that she's scared.

It's just that she doesn't like the feeling of being nowhere – suspended – stopped, it seems, and what's the point of going 500 miles an hour if you can't feel it?

The woman next to her is scared. She started crying shortly after take-off and telling Quinn that she'd already forgotten where the emergency exits were. Quinn pointed them out to her, but she didn't seem to take the information in, interrupted to tell her that there'd be a stampede if they had to use them and the two of them would be sure to be the last out, and she was supposed to be visiting her son, and she hadn't seen him in nearly a year, and if this plane went down she would never, ever see him again, and she would die cursing the Good Lord and go straight to hell. She sniffled to punctuate her outburst. Quinn smiled politely and handed her a tissue, but she'd already turned to the woman sitting in the aisle seat, who was less practical with her attentions and more inclined to listen to every detail of her granddaughter's life, age in-the-womb to four and a half.

Quinn taps her knee insistently against her tray, realizes that's probably about as annoying to the person in front of her as the cliché of small children's feet. She thinks of Beth, shakes her head, takes a deep breath, steadies herself.

Less than an hour, and she'll be landing in New Haven, dropping – _metaphorically we hope - _into her brand new life.

She reaches down into her laptop case, pulls out the brand new day planner she squeezed in there, finds herself checking surreptitiously to see if anyone's watching when she takes the sleek silver fountain pen from the top pocket of her blazer.

What? It's business chic. It's just about _presidential. _And besides, maybe she's not so fond of gadgets these days, since that time she nearly killed herself with convenience.

She opens the planner to September eighth, hesitates, flips forward a few more pages, skips forward a whole month, and then some. She ends up in November. The weekend of the tenth. She hovers, then leafs forward a week to the seventeenth and writes _Rachel_

She adds a question mark and closes the book quickly.

She presses her hand down on the leather cover, taps her knee against the tray a couple of times, scolds herself, curls her toes up in her shoe.

_One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four…_

She's determined to keep it up until she gets there – the counting – till she gets to New Haven, that is. She wants to see how well her number matches up with the clock when they touch the ground. 1037 was her out-loud record in grade school – she always won, every time – "the most boring game in the world," the best friend she barely remembers would scoff.

_Seven one thousand, eight one thousand…_

She's cheating, of course. She lost count already. She'll have to start again and try to concentrate this time.

_One one thousand –_

Quinn opens the planner and scribbles _New York _in brackets after the Rachel question.

She leaves the book open for a couple of minutes. The first time she closed it so quickly that _Rachel? _butterflied itself onto the opposite page.

She swallows sharply, looks around, leans forward and blows as quietly as she can on the fresh ink.

* * *

Rachel doesn't go home.

She decides on the train between the second and third stops that she's never going home again, tells the person to her right so among throaty sobs: "I'll never go home ever again. I'm leaving and I can't ever go back because _it hurts._"

The woman gingerly proffers a travel pack of tissues, but Rachel has already turned away. Her face is pressed against the window, her whole body throbbing.

_The glass is so cold, _she thinks, _just like my empty shell of a heart. _

She makes a mental note – personal pain – transcendent art – _Cold Like My Empty Heart._

She never writes the song. She's not sure if it's because it's a bridge too corny, even for her, or if it's because this is the kind of personal that's too personal – it's the kind of pain that can't be used for anything except crying a lot.

Her second night in New York City she says it again – she's never going home – only this time it's to her dads, and she is just as distracted, though not with pressing her face against a window, but with twirling around in the middle of Times Square till she can't walk straight.

She stumbles over to where her dads are snapping photos of her – yes, both of them, and a mile a minute.

"NEVER, Mr. Berries," she reiterates, with a grin from ear to ear, before running back for more twirling.

It shouldn't be too hard to convince them to spend some money out of her college fund on a place to stay till she can move into her dorm – it'll be _too easy _to rope them into packing up her room. They're big old softies at the best of times, she thinks wickedly, and she could tell by the looks on their poor, darling faces at the station that for all their Daytime-Emmy-worthy attempts to pretend they were okay with the wedding -

She falters. Her eyes fill with tears and she stops spinning.

Suddenly she's seeing Quinn's face –when she turned at the top of the stairs at the station – smiled fondly down at her like she was a small child who couldn't manage one plus one, and she had just now finally gotten it right.

That was how she knew how her dads really felt about her marrying Finn. Their faces were just like hers – warm, relieved, and sort of proud – like everything that could be right with the world was – like some kind of mockery of the way your friends and family are supposed to look at you on that special day when you walk down that special aisle in your special white dress.

It makes Rachel really, really, really… _angry. _

Because for a split second she forgets everything – how badly it hurt when Finn cut her loose to set her free - how it felt like she physically grew an inch the moment she set foot in New York – just how long it's been since she and Quinn have wanted anything but good things for one another.

For a split second she forgets everything, and it feels like the past three years have been a battle, and _Quinn Fabray won._

* * *

When Quinn arrives at Yale she knows her leather planner and her fountain pen are home – and so is she.

The place is beautiful, in ways nothing in Lima is beautiful. It's the subtle kind of bold. It's _big. _It's full of possibilities. There are trees enough to breathe, lawns so long you could lose people on them, buildings so tall they just make you want to reach up into the sky with them, so old they make you feel that much more alive.

And the outdoor education center? Has a _lake._

Quinn takes herself there first thing after she's unpacked – sits up the front of a full bus and looks out all the way. When they arrive she stands quietly, waits as the human contents of the bus disperse in the directions of their various activities. And then, when they're gone, she walks down to the water, looks out at the lake, grins, covers her mouth, wonders whether it gets solid enough to skate on in winter.

As the thought crosses her mind she can't help remembering that brief period of time when all the Glee kids went nuts for that roller rink that blonde washed-up alcoholic of Mr Schue's owned.

At the time she'd been too pregnant to join in – and too proud.

A little known fact about Quinn Fabray? She's not a skater, of any kind. The closest she's ever come to being good at it was senior ditch day with Artie, when she had the advantage of her only option being wheels and there being a whole lot of them.

It's true, but it's strange, because she's always been a dancer - even to this day, having won Nationals, having aced her SATs, having been accepted into an Ivy League school, the first thing her mother tells strangers about her is that she kicked in time in the womb and her first word was _arabesque._

Quinn's not sure she buys into that mythology. But she has been a dancer, for as long as she can remember. And if the constant of ballet class hadn't furnished her with agility, balance and strength already, Sue Sylvester's special brand of cheerleading coaching would have finished the job.

And yet? The first time she tried skating she fell flat on her face twice in quick succession. She hobbled over to the benches on bruised knees. She never tried again.

She feels like she'd like to try again now.

She feels like she's ready to fall a thousand times.

Quinn lays her sweater down on the dewy grass and sits on it. She reaches into her shoulder bag, pulls out a sandwich and a juice box, picnics alone.

It takes a long time to get down to the crusts. When she does she rolls them neatly in the plastic wrap, flattens the empty juice box and squashes it in there too, puts the cocooned remains of her lunch back in her bag, looks out at the lake and imagines it flat, pristine and sparkling, thick with cold, a light snowfall in her hair, noses, eyelashes, all that…

She remembers Rachel saying the only thing wrong with a roller rink was that there was no need for ear-muffs.

Quinn looks around, slings her bag over her shoulder, sings softly under her breath as she stands up: _I wish I had a river I could skate away on. _

She smiles, shakes her head, shakes her sweater too.

She's still humming the tune on the way back to the bus stop, and it's still not quite right – or it's still not quite the way she remembers it.

But then, she thinks – she hopes - nothing at all is anymore.

* * *

Quinn is determined to lie low until she can tower over everybody.

The plan is to ace all of her classes as quietly as possible, impress all her professors enough to get on their helpful side, but not to the point where they start trying to be her friend in front of everybody.

She's taking core courses only in her first semester – solid, safe, sensible options – History, Philosophy, Spanish, Modern Literature. No drama.

Literally – no drama. She won't be taking any theatre or film related units – not yet.

What she will do is sit up the back of every on-campus play, listen in on every reading, maybe sneak into a seminar or two with her sunglasses on - watch, listen, learn.

She'll gather intel as to what the most significant production of the year, or even of the next year, will be, and she will learn every line before she even picks up an audition sheet.

This is the way it will be, because this is the way Quinn always has been, even before the crash, and especially after: careful, clever, measured. It's a matter of risk versus reward. And she can wait – she has always been willing to wait.

Oh and she's not going to have any friends, either. She's decided they fall soundly under the general heading of Drama, capital D, and she's not going to be making any – at least not until she's towering over everybody.

The very _last _thing she wants is a boyfriend. Yale is a step up from McKinley, but looking around Quinn finds she doesn't see anybody who'd shine in the bright lights of her future.

It's difficult of course. Within a week she's had four offers to "show her around," and has declined all with varying degrees of politeness according to how smarmy the guy is. The one who winked at her got a curt "I have a map."

It's a drag, but it's okay. Quinn's used to it. Or, more accurately, she remembers being used to it - before Beth - back when Finn was one in a sea of many trying to secure her to their manly arm.

She remembers diligently lapping up the attention then. It was a thrill, probably, to be loved. Or an honor. Even by the dumbest jock, even by that kid Jacob Israel used to hang around with who would cut himself and lick the scabs and had to be sent to a special school for people who cut themselves and licked the scabs.

Quinn tries, vainly, to reconstruct the meaning of it all. She was popular, once. Then she wasn't. And when she thinks back to that hotel room in New York she can still feel the shadow of an ache.

_I just want someone to love me._

She still knows what it felt like to want her old life back. But the thing is that she can't remember _why _she did. It seems ridiculous now – unnatural – insane - like the girl in the horror movie running upstairs instead of out of the front door.

And so she makes a study of going unnoticed – as best she can – she makes an art of brushing people off like breadcrumbs.

But there's one guy that she can't seem to shake.

The trouble is that he's sweet – the trouble is that his name is Joe. And even though he's the kind of guy who nurses a buzz-cut and always, always, _always _wears shoes, he still reminds Quinn of the boy she left behind at McKinley. It's the naiveté, she thinks, remembering how Joe – Yale Joe – called her miss and wanted to shake her hand, and for a minute she thought he might be going to kiss it, and she bit back a smile and his straight face didn't give an inch.

They're alike that way, the two Joes. Gentle, entirely well-meaning, and humorless in a way that makes you want to laugh for them.

It's only when Quinn meets the second one that she realizes she lied to the first.

"Something new" was a cork in an empty bottle. It was a way to get him to stay put – a way to hold onto someone – anyone – and it seemed like he was the only person close enough to touch.

And she knew, the moment she said the words, even before they left her lips, that they weren't true – that they weren't fair - that something new would be something on the scrap heap before the first full day of summer.

The thing was that the accident made her afraid, for a little while. And being afraid made her selfish. And - Quinn shrinks from the thought - even then, even in the wake of her great epiphany, there she was, wanting her old life back and not knowing why.

She wishes she'd said a proper goodbye to that Joe. And maybe that's why she can't shake this one.

She was honest though – from the start. She shook his hand firmly, told him she did know where the refectory was, that she was going there to get frozen yogurt, that he seemed like the kind of person she would like, that if he walked over with her to get yogurt, he'd be her friend – her only friend – and that's all it would be.

* * *

If there's one thing Rachel Berry hates it's waiting. She's fairly sure Madame Thibodaux chose to allocate performance weeks alphabetically _by first name _because she _knows_.

She realizes with horror in week one that there's a Brenda and a Ben and a Bella, and here she is, a _Berry, _thank you very much, sitting quietly all the way to week seven before she can show everyone what she's got.

It's a travesty! It's an _indignity. _Nobody told her there would be more waiting at this school – in this place she's already been waiting to be her whole life.

She sighs as loudly as she can. Madame Thibodaux has this way of catching her eye every time she's about to speak and reducing her to sounds that are not words, and so Rachel finds she has never been so silent in her life as in this place she came to to sing.

She expects to be bored with her mouth shut. She doesn't expect to feel sick.

The thing is that these kids are _good._

Of course, she should have known they would be. If Harmony hadn't been a clue, then the fact that Kurt was not considered good enough, having _wowed the universe_ with his tastefully gay audition extravaganza, really should have been.

Rachel holds onto the sides of her chair like it's a raft.

Maybe it should make her feel special that she's here, amid the cream of the crop. It doesn't. It just makes her feel like she's drowning in the darned cream.

The classes are varied in focus, but all are small and very intense. Basically it's like being in Glee club full-time – a Glee club full of Mercedes Joneses and not the comfort of a Sugar Motta in sight. As Rachel looks around the room at eight, nine, ten faces that are not looking back at her, she has this awful feeling that she is about to start again. That she will have to prove herself here, once more from the top.

And she _knew _she would have to – and she _knows _she will.

So why on earth is it that she feels so hopeless?

It takes her a long time to figure it out – an hour's incessant pondering and a catalyst in the form of the creature from the NYADA Underworld who shares her room.

Her name is Leanne, and she has black and blue stripey hair and too much eyeliner and reminds Rachel of Tina when she used to dress all alternative like the staff at Hot Topic. Only Leanne is less meek than Tina ever was – and a lot more inclined to tell Rachel exactly what she thinks of her from day one.

Or day two, to be precise. Leanne is late.

Their first meeting goes something like this. Rachel says an earnest "Hello" and gets a complacent "Hey" in return. They exchange names. Leanne warns her lazily that her boyfriend might hang out in here sometimes because "you know." Rachel says that's fine, that's really nice, actually, she's so lucky - because _her _fiancé is in the army and she might never see him again, so he probably _won't _be hanging out in here sometimes.

Leanne raises an eyebrow. "You have a fiancé?" she asks with a scornful kind of yawn. She nods toward Rachel's plaid skirt. "What are you, a thirty year old schoolgirl?"

Rachel sniffs, stands her ground, explains politely: "No, I'm eighteen. But the fact is we're the love of each other's lives – and it will be a long engagement – very long – we both agreed my stardom had to come first."

Leanne nods like she didn't quite catch that. "All I'm saying is you kind of look like if Britney Spears' mom had to go to a funeral."

She slinks out of the room before Rachel can think of something to say. She's long gone by the time she comes up with 'You look like if Tina Cohen-Chang wasn't Asian!'

And Rachel realizes in that moment - even if the retort hadn't been inherently useless – even if you just 'had to be there' - the point is that Tina Cohen-Chang doesn't exist in Leanne's world.

Neither does Mike – or Sam – or Mercedes – not the real one. Neither do Puck or Artie, Santana, Brittany, Blaine, Kurt, Quinn (Finn). Mr Schue. Heck, even the newbies.

They're all gone. And it's not that Rachel's afraid of starting again with beating the world over the head with her talent – she could never be afraid of that – it's her _nature. _

But she is afraid of starting again with the people.

The thing is that NYADA is wholly populated by those who do not know Rachel Berry – who do not understand her – who probably won't ever even want to try.

The thing is that Rachel Berry had gotten used to having friends.

There is no catharsis. Knowing she's lonely doesn't make Rachel feel any less lonely. She's an outsider – again – and maybe this time she'll never get in. At McKinley she was a part of something special, because she could sing – because there was something she was the best at. People are always more interested in you when you can win trophies for them.

At NYADA people win their own trophies. Nobody needs her.

Suddenly Rachel feels afraid to talk to people. Suddenly she's walking down halls with her head down. She avoids – everyone – everything. She spends most of her free time in the library where you have to be quiet – it's expected – it's the rule. More often than not Leanne has taken the liberty of turning her bedside lamp off by the time she sneaks into bed.

On the second Thursday of the semester she's pulling the covers up when her phone skitters across the nightstand. She pounces on it as quietly as she can.

An email from Finn.

He says:

Hey Rachel. I wasn't sure whether this was a good idea but then I guess I did it anyways. I wanted to tell you I love you I guess. I was packing up my room and it felt like so long since you left. You don't have to answer this and maybe its better if you don't. I know your kicking ass and taking names in New York. Hopefully I'll be kicking some ass in Georgia too. I'm excited about it actually and I know your scared about the army, but its not like I'll be going to Afghanistan any time soon I promise. Oh well… take care of yourself. Don't party too hard. Your a star. Finn.

Rachel would probably start sobbing if Leanne wasn't sleeping aggressively three feet away. She blinks back tears, lets the phone fall to her lap. The room lightens, barely, for a moment, and on the wall by Leanne's bed Rachel sees a poster she hasn't noticed before.

NYADA PRESENTS _LES MISERABLES _ONE NIGHT ONLY VALENTINE'S DAY 2013

There are five faces on it. She doesn't recognize any of them.

* * *

Rachel wakes up on the Friday morning of the sixth week of semester and knows two things. First, on Monday she will be presenting a solo performance to the group. Second, she needs to get out of here.

Not just the room. 'Here' is everything, and she feels miserable and airless all morning. Even outside in the street. Even outside in the streets of _New York City._

It's just past midday and she's struggling to swallow bits of bagel when she realizes something has to be done.

_It's time for action, _she thinks furiously. She storms back to the dorm.

Leanne is eating a tuna melt and flipping through a magazine. Her fingers are greasy. Rachel doesn't say a word to her.

She just yanks her case down from on top of the closet and starts filling it with miscellaneous essentials.

When she's done, she puts on her coat and her hat, even though it's seventy-something out. It doesn't feel right to set out on a journey without a coat and a hat.

She fully intends not to pause at the door, and yet somehow her body tricks her into it, and Leanne doesn't miss the opportunity. "Are you fleeing?" she asks.

She sounds smug. Like she knew it all along.

"You don't know _anything,_" Rachel says.

She slams the door.

* * *

The station is crowded. There's a long line at the ticket booth and Rachel is just thinking how that doesn't matter when she realizes it does.

She can't blame her dads. They would never have thought she wanted her copy of Charlotte's Web with her at NYADA. She doesn't want her copy of Charlotte's Web with her at NYADA. But she does want the thick paper rectangle that's sandwiched between the pages of it.

She falters. She crouches down and holds onto her case for no good reason.

The rational thing to do would be to go back. Call dad and ask him to send the pass. Wait.

She turns it over in her mind. _Maybe next weekend, _she thinks, the way people say things that don't really matter.

Rachel bows her head, squeezes her eyes shut.

Twenty five minutes later she is on a train.


	2. Chapter 2

It's a shock when there's a knock at Quinn's door late in the afternoon of Friday the twenty-eighth of September and she opens it and it's Rachel Berry in a red coat with a little red hat on, a little pink case at her feet, the exact same Rachel Berry Quinn last waved to from platform B of Lima Central Station.

The Rachel says "Hi," in an anxious and relieved way, and Quinn turns around to glance at the pile of books on her bed, half expecting to see herself there like Alice in Wonderland, fast asleep.

_I never fall asleep without meaning to, _she thinks. And the bed is empty, she can feel her two feet firmly on the ground. Yet still it seems more likely that this is a dream than that she penciled Rachel into her datebook for November in New York and now suddenly here she is in September in New Haven.

It's difficult to be contemplative when someone is throwing their arms around you and telling you very quickly about texting and trains and going home and _At the last minute _and _It's so good to see you _and _I don't have to stay._

Quinn returns the hug abruptly, like she's just remembered how hugs work. She can feel Rachel's body against hers: little and soft - but solid. She's definitely real.

As soon as that's established, Quinn thinks she should: pull away, fold her hands, smile, say "You definitely have to stay!", take her case, show her where the bathroom is, get her a glass of water, and ask about NYADA.

She can't do any of it. Can't in the sense of _can't. _She feels as though she's paralyzed – and, she notes dryly, she knows what it actually feels like to be paralyzed.

After a beat in which Quinn squeezes her eyes shut then opens them, like they're the only thing she has control over, Rachel pulls away, Rachel folds her hands, Rachel says "I mean, I should probably get back tonight anyway."

Quinn thinks she feels weirdly light now that Rachel's gone. Not _gone _gone. It's just a step back. But maybe she was holding her down – or up – or maybe – Quinn knows this feeling – when you push hard against a doorframe and then you stop and your arms float away without you.

Her whole body had been tense, she realizes. So tense she was just a block with eyes. And now her right leg is shaking like it used to after cheer practice when Sue was on maximum crazy.

She sits down quickly, feels her hands tap jaggedly against the bed.

"You gave me a shock, Rachel," she says, "In those clothes - it was like I was seeing a ghost."

She thinks that's it – the shaking - the clothes – a small red ghost – Rachel smiles and says "That's funny," takes the hat off, holds it behind her.

Quinn presses her fingers into the comforter. "The bathroom is on your right at the end of the corridor," she says. She shakes her head again at Rachel's confused "Thank you?" and laughs.

"You can stay, by the way," she says, "I mean I'm the one who wanted you to come." She stands up, tugs surreptitiously at the top of her jeans – they hang a little low – she normally wears a belt with them, but the buckle digs into her stomach when she's lying down – she was lying down less than a minute ago – she was lying down alone with her books.

Rachel doesn't seem to notice the surreptitious tugging. She's hanging her hat over the doorknob and laying her case flat and saying how if it's not convenient though, she can always check herself into a hotel, which could be fun, actually, because she has never checked herself into a hotel before – she's never even stood at the desk, because she's always so sleepy after traveling – really, she almost took a nap at the bus stop outside just now.

Quinn is smiling and trying to remember whether there are paper cups by the drinking fountain. "You're just lucky my roomie is so chill," she jokes, gesturing to the empty space across the room.

"Oh, right! I didn't even think of that – which is crazy because I know all about unchill roomies, I _really_ do." Rachel waves one hand for emphasis. The other is busy opening Quinn's closet and diving straight in.

She shrugs off her coat and hangs it on a spare hanger, and Quinn bites her lip, doesn't mention that the hanger isn't spare at all – it's the padded floral one – and Rachel only thinks it's spare because she knocked it when she was fishing around - and somewhere in there there's a white silk dress on the floor.

Quinn spends the next ten minutes worrying about it while Rachel chatters away, teasing that she's going to go freshen up at the end of every other sentence. She's pulling things out of her case too and positioning them around the room on the floor like she's arranging flowers.

"Whoa, Mary Poppins," Quinn says, wondering if Rachel would notice if she just went and picked the dress up right now – maybe if she was casual enough…

Rachel looks her quizzically, but immediately starts humming _A Spoonful of Sugar. _

Quinn smiles, explains: "That's a lot of stuff for a little case." She edges towards the closet, asks "So tell me about this roomie from hell?" and those are the magic words, apparently.

Rachel rolls her eyes. "Let's not speak of her right now. I don't want to ruin Christmas."

And with that, she's out the door.

Quinn hurries to the closet – it's two steps – she's not sure it's possible to really hurry with two steps – and yet she feels like she's run up a flight of stairs when she reaches in and rescues her poor dress, shakes it out and hangs it with another.

It takes her a good thirty seconds – this hanger is wire – her head is light - her hands are still shaking.

* * *

Quinn asks Rachel three times what she wants to do and each time gets a cheerful variation on "Whatever you would normally do!"

Unfortunately what Quinn would normally do on a Friday afternoon is study, and what she would study this particular Friday afternoon is the systematized murder of a million or so Jewish children. She's pretty sure that would ruin Christmas too – or Hanukah – or Chanukah – or whatever they called it on The OC.

She already had the presence of mind to kick those particular library books under the bed while Rachel was in the bathroom, but now that they are having an argument about which one of them will sleep on the floor, Quinn's not so sure that was a good idea.

She's having this horrific vision of Rachel glimpsing the word Holocaust by the light of the moon and thinking Quinn keeps the books there like a porn stash.

She grimaces, nearly misses a beat in the game of "Yes!" "_No._" they're playing.

Rachel can be stubborn when she wants to be – and right now she wants to be stubborn about Quinn's back. She breaks pattern suddenly – a bold move – risky - she starts "But if – "

"If you're about to say it's your fault I got hit by a truck in the first place, let me just get the jump on you with 'That's a load,' and so help me God Rachel, if you don't stop saying it, I will organize for you to get hit by a car just so we can call it even." Quinn frowns, tugs a rug out of the top of the closet. "Or maybe a golf cart." She shakes her head. "A bicycle." She nudges Rachel on the way to her pillows, qualifies: "_Gently._"

Rachel shows no signs of listening, says _"Oh!" _like if she was a cartoon a light bulb would appear over her head, grabs her case and throws herself down on the floor. She leans violently around the room, gathers up her phone, her copy of _Barbra: A Life, _a travel pack of tissues and an eye patch, lines them up on top of the case. For a finishing touch, she scrambles over to Quinn's desk, scrambles back with the cup of water she gave her earlier, says "There," as she sets it down.

She looks up at Quinn, beaming in triumph. "Behold my nightstand."

Quinn raises an eyebrow. "You do know I can just pick that stuff up and put it on the actual nightstand, right?"

Rachel turns a nervous eye towards her creation, like she thinks Quinn's going to make a play for it, right here right now.

"What are you going to do?" Quinn asks. "Sit there till bedtime?" She's laughing now. It's impossible not to laugh when Rachel is fierce about small things.

Quinn drops one of her pillows down into Rachel's lap, leaves the room in search of extra bedding.

Rachel calls out "If that's what it takes," after her, and she laughs again – she laughs all the way to the laundry room and several steps back.

* * *

In the end they get coffee, and Quinn thinks it's probably the dullest thing two human beings can ever do together.

_This is why people should give me six to eight weeks notice before showing up, _she thinks to herself. In the right circumstances, she is good at entertaining, but she's not relaxed about it.

It's funny. Quinn watches Rachel put sugar in her soy latte. She leans in like she's counting the grains, leans back while she stirs, takes a deep breath when she brings it to her nose, squeaks when she sips it before it's cooled, sets it down and wrinkles her nose like she's miming a sneeze. Somewhere along the way there are jazz hands. This is Rachel. She was born to perform. Quinn was not. And yet somehow she loves it anyway.

It wasn't always that way. Before Glee, performance was her whole life – in the sense that even her enjoyment of it was an act. It was a means to an end – all of it – even mastering the double nine with hours to go before her first cheer competition - even the first time she tied the ribbons on her ballet slippers herself – it was mistaken for an eagerness to get up and jeté her way around the house, when in reality it was all about the smile on her mother's face – the way she clasped her hands together and called her father into the room.

Quinn is a people pleaser, that's what it comes down to. Even when she was selfish, vain, crazy, whatever else so many people have called her, it was never about pleasing herself. _That _is something different altogether. Something she's just starting to get the hang of – maybe.

She has sugar on her fingertips. She licks them clean.

Rachel has stopped talking a mile a minute, and Quinn has been lazy about picking up the conversational slack. A silence has fallen, and Quinn is looking at Rachel – really looking at her face – for the first time since she arrived.

"You look sad," she says. Her fingers still feel sticky. "Are you sad?"

Rachel takes a while to answer and Quinn thinks _Of course she's sad. Of course there's a reason she's here._

She feels deflated – sort of foolish, even though she's right – even though Rachel says "Yes, that would be me – sad – that's the word."

There are a lot more words that follow though, and far too many of them have 'Finn' in between.

Quinn wants to lecture Rachel – badly – like the way you want to scratch an angry mosquito bite. But this is not the time. She's beginning to think 'sad' doesn't cover it. Rachel is on the verge of tears – and not the trademark Rachel Berry kind – not the emotional outpouring during a song, not the explosion of drama queen everybody is so used to. It's quiet, blinked-back, small and sort of frightening. And the more she talks, the fewer and further between the Finns become.

Rachel does miss him. She makes that clear – repeatedly. But that's not what this is about.

"It's just hard," she says, letting her hair fall forward to shield her cheeks. "It took me so long to make friends," she looks up at Quinn, nods her way, says "Friends that _matter," _and Quinn's hands fall together with the emphasis.

Rachel looks back at what's left of her latte. "And now, I don't even have friends that _don't _matter, you know? I mean, I don't even have a Rory to say hi to every other day."

She sniffles between 'to' and 'every'.

Quinn hesitates. She slides a hand forward across the table and touches the tips of her fingers to Rachel's. It doesn't quite feel like enough, so she taps her index finger with her own before withdrawing.

_It's like cooking, _she thinks, _It's like how you never put all the salt in at once. _She rubs her fingertips together. _Or the sugar._

Rachel's shrugging self-consciously now.

Quinn smiles. "I get it," she says, "I think everybody feels that way. We've all been pulled up at the roots, Rachel, and it's going to take time to make new friends…" She looks up, the door is open, she says distractedly, "That's all…"

It's the worst possible moment for Joe to show up. It's the worst possible moment for him to be followed by his band of merry men and women.

The thing about Joe: people like him. Not a lot – not as much as Quinn does – but a lot of people like him a little and that's just enough to make him what you would call popular. It's strange, really. The life of the party he's not. He's quiet and sensible and Quinn sometimes wonders if he's ever made anyone but her laugh in his life.

She casts a glance at Rachel as they approach, via the vending machines. She wonders if she'll like Joe. It's not as though Finn ever had much of a sense of humor.

She shakes her head. Rachel _will _like him, the same way everybody else does. It's almost impossible not to like someone that genuine. Joe means everything he says and says nearly all of what he means, and that makes a lot of people feel safe. It makes Quinn feel safe, because she knows he isn't going to try to pull anything on her.

Rachel's looking at her and nodding hopefully. Joe's cracking open a Dr Pepper. Quinn is torn between looking casual and looking very serious – one of them might have the troops passing right by – if only she knew which.

_She who hesitates, _she thinks, when Joe catches her eye, and then _Oh god, this could not be worse, _when the blonde girl whose name she can't remember waves enthusiastically.

Quinn panics. Rachel has raccoon eyes. She grabs her paper napkin and leans over the table to wipe the mascara away, and when Rachel flinches like she might have been going to hit her or something, Quinn doesn't have time to feel affronted, or to remember why maybe she shouldn't. "Hold still," she says simply, and Rachel does.

Seven seconds later Rachel could pass for a non-committal goth. Ten seconds later there are six extra people at their table, five of whom make a show of knowing Quinn's name, and Rachel is raising both eyebrows and shaking Joe's hand.

"You didn't tell us you had a guest coming, Quinn," a boy with too many freckles says, and Quinn grits her teeth to avoid replying with 'That's because I don't tell you anything, whatsyourname.'

Instead she says, "Rachel dropped in from New York. She's at NYADA. You'd all better get her autograph before she leaves."

"What's NYADA?" someone Quinn knows is named Emily asks, and before she can make her feel suitably ignorant, Joe fields it.

"New York Academy of Dramatic Arts," he says promptly, and then he responds to something freckle-face said with "Quinn told me."

Someone she's pretty sure is named Andrew asks if Rachel's an actress, and freckles says his cousin was in an episode of Two and a Half Men. Quinn rolls her eyes, says pleasantly "Not that kind of an actress, Geoffrey." She has never met a Geoffrey in her life.

Rachel explains that she's a singer, mostly, but she has been Maria in West Side Story, and that's what she's at NYADA for – for singing – and dancing – and acting – for Broadway, above all things.

People aren't really listening, except Joe, and Quinn thinks that's probably her favorite thing about him – that he listens.

A second later she's not so sure. "I already knew all of that," he says, "And also that you can hit a perfect A5, which I had to google. There was a lot of stuff about paper." He opens a packet of Cheetos and holds it out to Rachel, then to Quinn, turns back to Rachel, says "If Kelly Clarkson is amazing then you are amazing."

Quinn wants to say 'She is amazing,' loudly. She would have if she wasn't already feeling a little embarrassed. It's one thing to cheer someone on – it's another to do the cheering when they're not even there.

Matters are made worse when some guy she doesn't remember even laying eyes on before says "Oh, you're Rachel Berry?"

Quinn fidgets subtly. She hopes Rachel's ego is big enough to assume word has spread from New York. A year ago she would have been sure of it, but these days… These days Quinn barely even sees the makings of a diva sitting across from her.

She forgets about being embarrassed for a moment and watches Rachel. Right at this moment she's demurring so politely with Joe that she's dangerously close to telling somebody she is not actually amazing.

It's just not right.

"Come on," Quinn says, grabbing their empty foam cups, "Let's get out of here."

When she stands up Joe says "Later," which is nicely understated, Quinn thinks. Two other people, including not-Geoffrey, attach her name to Bye. The enthusiastic waver goes with "See you Tuesday," which sounds that much more personal than 'See you in Spanish.'

Quinn says a generalized "Uh huh," and then she and Rachel have escaped.

* * *

Outside Rachel folds her arms, smiles and says "It's going to take time to make new friends," and "That's all," and "Everybody feels that way."

Quinn drops their cups in the trash, dusts her hands off. "I don't even know most of those people," she says.

Rachel laughs in a monosyllabic kind of way. "Ha! That doesn't help."

Quinn shrugs and starts walking, says "Rachel," like you shake your head. There are a lot of things she could say right now but they all feel a little too Dr Phil. Rachel's only been here an hour and ten minutes. They should still be on the weather. There certainly should not have been _crying _of any sort.

And maybe Rachel's thinking the same thing, because she starts launching into detailed raptures about how long the lawn is and how tall the trees are, and when the sun falls down around the top of Harkness Tower it's how old the buildings are and how pretty the sun is, and Quinn laughs lightly, says "I'm pretty sure the sun is the same."

They've gone about fifty slow paces in peaceful inconsequence when Rachel asks, in a small voice "Do you ever talk to anyone from McKinley?"

Quinn feels like someone has just shaken her awake. She yawns. "Not in the last few months."

Rachel laughs _Ha, _again, and it's a little quieter and more deliberate. "It's only been a few months," she points out.

"I got a post-card from Mercedes?" Quinn offers, "She says she goes everywhere on roller skates now and sometimes shoots whip cream from her bikini top."

"She does?" Rachel asks wistfully. She shakes her head. "I mean, you did?"

Quinn frowns. It hadn't occurred to her that Rachel might be pining for her own postcard from Mercedes. It hadn't exactly occurred to her that she missed… everyone. That she missed _Glee. _She could swear she was listening intently to everything Rachel said over coffee about friends that matter and friends that don't, and yet somehow she didn't get it - until this moment – that for all intents and purposes the two were interchangeable.

_Mercedes comma me, _she thinks. And _Rory._

Quinn winces. Suddenly she feels bad for not introducing Rachel properly to people – for making her leave so soon when she might have wanted to stay. And just as suddenly she realizes how long she's been silent, that she never gave Rachel's non-question a non-answer. There was no 'Yeah,' no 'Mmhm,' no 'Sure did.'

Only silence.

She's looking at her feet for so long she nearly goes to the wrong door when they get back to the hall. Twice, she makes an abrupt left turn, and she can feel Rachel swinging into line at her side and smiling up close. When they finally get to the door and she's keying in the code Rachel starts to ask, teasingly, if she's sure she has the right –

It clicks open before she can finish.

Quinn turns back around, holding the handle. Rachel's a step below, looking up at her, and she feels tall and ungainly suddenly, like a scarecrow.

"Santana emailed me at the start of the semester," she says quickly. "Did you know she's in New York?"

Rachel's eyes widen. "No," she wails, like someone's just stolen her lottery ticket and won.

Quinn thinks the waterworks might be about to start again. She feels hard and absent. She says "Yeah, so anytime you need a friend." She walks inside and holds the door for _One, two._


	3. Chapter 3

It's six o'clock by the time Rachel has taken her shoes and socks off and Quinn has been to the bathroom twice and in between put the papers she was reading earlier into the kind of meticulous order even she would usually deem prissy.

By 6:01 the two of them are sitting on the floor in Quinn's room. Rachel tries to make small talk for about ten minutes, Quinn tries for maybe two. She knows because she's watching the clock on her nightstand. It doesn't show the seconds, but she's counting those, and that's probably why she's having trouble with the small talk, she thinks.

Or maybe it's the other way around.

Either way, she'll need to put a stop to it. She can't count all weekend. 1307 is her record. She needs to get out of here – now – tonight. She can't go to the bathroom again - Rachel will think she has diabetes or something.

She draws her knees up to her chest. "Rachel, I forgot that I have this thing tonight," she says on an impulse – a sudden impulse - an irresistible one. She looks up and then back down again. There's a tiny coffee stain on her jeans, just above the knee. She scratches at it but it won't budge.

Rachel says 'Oh' in two pieces. And then "That's fine. I'll be fine. I should probably think about my song for Monday – I'm singing on Monday," she explains, "for the first time properly for class, so…" She smiles, knocks on the wall she's leaning against. "Too bad you don't have sound-proof rooms."

Quinn frowns. She puts her thumb over the stain and pretends it's not there. "They have sound-proof rooms at NYADA?"

"No," Rachel says, "But they should. Sound-proof and Leanne-proof." The last part is muttered.

Quinn takes her thumb away. "If you'd given me some notice I could probably have changed it," she says quickly, and then she quickly asks about Leanne.

It's the roommate, of course. The Chrismukkah-ruiner. Rachel tells Quinn everything about her, from her 'Christina Aguilera circa skank' hair, to the fact that she requested a room transfer in front of Rachel having spent less than 20 minutes in her company even though they were specifically told that no room transfers would be granted during the first semester, excepting for medical reasons.

Quinn wonders what kind of medical reasons you could have for not being able to be in the same room as somebody. _Is there a name for whatever the hell is wrong with me right now? _she wonders dryly.

Rachel is still listing Leanne's sins. "_And,_" she says, to finish, "She _thinks _she knows more than _me _about _Barbra._"

She's sitting cross-legged with her hands on her hips. As if that wasn't comical enough, she leans over and grabs _Barbra: A Life, _gets up on her knees and holds it closer to Quinn's face than is necessary. "I have read this seven times," she says, with grim significance.

Quinn bites her lip. She's almost forgotten which kind of crazy she might be when Rachel clutches the book to her chest and says "Anyway. Sorry to hold you up."

"That's okay," Quinn says, less well than she would have liked, "I don't have to go for a bit." Her face feels hot.

"Oh thank god." Rachel holds _Barbra _up to cover her face. Her eyes are the only things Quinn can see and they are smiling. "I was just thinking of the best way to ask you if you had any bread without sounding like something out of _Oliver!_"

She tosses the book down on the pile of blankets that will be a mattress later, asks brightly if Quinn has time for food.

Quinn smiles guiltily.

She does, as it happens.

* * *

The closest café is possibly the crummiest one on campus, but Rachel makes a big show of saying how they need to be quick and all. Quinn participates reluctantly. She gets out her phone twice on the way to check the time on purpose like it matters.

Rachel gets fries, maybe. Quinn gets something else.

There's an awkward moment when Rachel tries to give the kitchen staff cash, and Quinn has to explain that she swiped her card twice. Rachel says thank you and something about how sweet that is, and Quinn tries to smile and says, "It's no big deal, I get five extra meals a semester and when my mom comes we go somewhere nice."

Her stomach tightens when she gets to the end of the sentence. It sounds _awful. _She lurches to the nearest table and drags Rachel's chair out for her with a loud scraping sound that makes the few other people in the place turn to look.

She hesitates, then sits in the chair herself. Rachel takes the other one. It doesn't make a sound when she pulls it out.

Rachel's asking about her mom. Quinn says she's "really well," but Rachel looks perplexed and she thinks maybe that wasn't the question and so that wasn't a possible answer.

They eat. Or Rachel eats and Quinn forces food down her throat. _Her _throat. Not Rachel's. Quinn shakes that bizarre image out of her head.

They talk about courses and majors and Quinn is too far on the monosyllabic side of things and very conscious of it. Speaking of mom, she thinks, mom would be aghast.

_Be polite, be polite, be polite._

It's like a metronome made of words.

Rachel is having no difficulty being polite, or carrying almost all the conversation herself. She's sharing every detail of her NYADA course structure, and making all of Quinn's sentences longer with how _interesting _that must be and how _tough _this must be, and how many textbooks did she have to buy, and how many papers will she have to write.

She's not happy that Quinn isn't doing any acting. Quinn doesn't know what to say to that. She's so busy smiling and making sure something happens to her food at regular intervals that she almost forgets to leave.

It's Rachel who reminds her. She's been glancing at the clock pointedly for a good five minutes when she says "So when did you say you had to go?"

Quinn flinches, imperceptibly she hopes. She didn't say. She didn't give a time. She's sure of it.

She turns around and turns back with an apologetic smile in place. "I'd better get going," she says.

Rachel nods, says "Sorry," for no good reason, and grabs her purse and a handful of fries.

Quinn holds her hands behind her back, says in a small voice "That's okay."

* * *

Quinn is acutely aware that she is hiding.

When she left Rachel she went straight to the Bass Library, just because it was the only place she could think of in the moment, and she felt it was important to walk briskly in some kind of direction in case Rachel hadn't gone inside yet - in case she was still standing on the step outside the dorm watching her.

It was important to look like she had a purpose. Quinn scolds herself. She's a better liar than this. She knows trying not to look guilty only makes you look guilty. If she really had somewhere to get to she wouldn't worry about being brisk – unless she was late – and she's never late.

Rachel probably thought it was strange that she was walking that fast, if Rachel thinks anything at all about the way she walks – if she was even watching, which she probably wasn't, because why would she watch?

_She probably didn't._

Quinn pretends to read the back of a novel by someone whose name she forgets. She wishes she'd looked back. She thinks of Orpheus and Eurydice and how the words 'liar' and 'lyre' are the same when you say them out loud.

She feels uneasy.

She glances at the clock on the far wall. She's been in the building less than ten minutes. The walk was less than three. She can't remember how long she told Rachel she would be, and again she thinks _You're a better liar than this, _and, a long shadow in its wake, _You're a better person than this._

Thirteen minutes in and she's already starting to actively hate herself. But she's committed now. There is no way back. Onward and upward. In for a penny, in for…

Quinn squints, like her memory is an eye chart by the clock.

… at least an hour and a half?

Was that what she said? Would that be reasonable?

She goes to slide the book she's holding back onto the shelf and finds that its place has been swallowed up. She sighs. None of this is _reasonable._ She lays the book across the top of the others and starts walking between the aisles like she's browsing, thinks chidingly how nobody browses in a library, and if she was really looking for something she would have a call number written on her hand.

She folds her arms and rests them on a shelf, leans in and peers out through the space at the top of a row of books. She does not expect to see the blonde girl from Spanish class at the counter. Waving. _At her._

"But…" Quinn says, to nobody except herself - though if The Waver can see her who knows whether she can hear her too. She figures it's futile to pretend the girl hasn't gotten her attention. And dangerous. If she doesn't get a response she will probably just follow her around campus waving until she does.

So Quinn waves back. It's an awkward, tight-fingered affair. Like the Queen. She turns around quickly in case things are being mouthed at her, and hurries to the stairs to her left.

_Down the rabbit hole, _she thinks.

She heaves a sigh of relief when she gets to the bottom, sucks all the air she just expelled back into her body when she runs straight into Joe coming around the corner.

"Hey," he says, like she hasn't just smacked into his chest.

"Hey," Quinn replies, miserably.

It's not that she's not pleased to see him – or that she wouldn't be pleased to see him in other circumstances – he is her friend after all – her only friend – and maybe on any other old Friday night he would have said 'Wanna drink some of my roommate's beer?' and she would have said 'Sure,' and forty minutes later he would be playing Battlefield 3 and talking to other people, and she would be staring at the ceiling and hearing songs from the past in her head.

That was last week. When everything was slow and easy.

Quinn says mournfully that she's gotta run, and Joe says, like it's as good as 'Later,' "There's a tunnel over there."

She frowns, says "Thank you," as though maybe he just showed her the way, and maybe he did, because she walks backward in the direction he's pointing, turns around and keeps walking, and there _is _a tunnel.

She starts down it.

_Down, down, down, _she thinks.

She runs her hand along the stone wall. She's wearing sneakers, so her footsteps don't echo, but she still keeps thinking they might start at any moment. She remembers this now – she remembers being told about it in Orientation – there's a tunnel that joins two libraries. Maybe she would have been down here already if she spent more time in libraries. But there hasn't been any need to yet. She's found that a Freshman can get nearly everything she needs from textbooks – for the first eight weeks of semester at least. Anything else is just overkill – and she does, actually – she definitely overkills with the learning. It's just she's in and out when she comes to get her books. When you have a dorm room to yourself there's no need to stick around, unless you want to run into people and end up drinking beer.

Or unless you want to hide.

Quinn stops midway down, lies back against the wall and closes her eyes. The tunnel is empty and silent, and she thinks how she notices the silence that much more when Rachel's here – when she's here and then not-here. Probably because she talks so much. Probably because she sings softly without realizing it sometimes.

Earlier, when Quinn was coming back from the bathroom the first time, there was a vague, mellow strain of _Take My Breath Away _hanging in the air.

There is nothing now.

Only silence.

Quinn's alone. She's as far as she can get from the embankments of human beings on either side, and it feels better and worse. Like the first few seconds you hold ice against a burn.

It seems important to be alone. Quinn could have stayed with Joe – she could have gone wherever he was going. She could have had beers and been comfortable, but she thinks it would have hurt.

She thinks of Rachel wandering around a hundred and fifty square feet in little lonely circles.

She can't be with other people. It's not right.

As if on cue, somebody comes in from the other side of the tunnel and Quinn jerks away from the wall so fast she nearly loses her balance. Whoever it is doesn't notice, maybe because it's actually two people talking in hushed but vigorous tones about how obviously God doesn't exist.

"I shouldn't have to be confronted with that kind of iconography while I'm checking out a book," one says, as they sweep by.

Quinn knows where she's going now. She starts walking again and pulls out the map she keeps in her purse. The Bass and Sterling libraries are closer together than she thought and joined by this tunnel. She's been to both, but never from one to the other till now.

When she makes it to the lobby she nods softly to herself. This is the big one. The library with libraries in it. The library that's sort of almost like a church. She gazes up at the saints above the circulation desk and thinks that they should probably be making her feel bad. She should probably feel watched – watched and judged and not let into the Kingdom of Heaven.

But she's never felt that way in a Church. Not even when she was hiding the evidence of her biggest sin under an artfully draped blouse.

Churches have always made Quinn feel safe. At home. It's little wonder given she spent more time in one growing up than most kids do these days. She still goes to Mass every week here at Battell Chapel.

She loves the feeling of being surrounded by bare stone. She loves the colored light pouring in on Sunday mornings. She loves the sound of an organ – whether it's a wild, battering roar or a meek, muffled whistle. She loves the shiny, worn wood of the pews, and the candles flickering under painted faces. She loves the thin pages of hymnbooks.

Most of all Quinn loves singing in Church. Before Glee it was the only time she loved to sing; when everyone else was singing loudly around her; when the only audience was an amorphous benevolence she would never meet - or not until things like wrong notes no longer mattered and never would again.

She would stand among the congregation and belt out songs of praise and feel completely safe and completely free. She didn't even worry how her face looked.

Quinn wishes she were home suddenly. Home-home. Before Yale. Before the crash. Before Beth. Before Glee. Before McKinley altogether. She suddenly wishes she was ten years old again, with the mole on her cheek and an obsession with chewing gum, a collection of ordinary seashells, best friends with a boy her mother would never let her play with, only just beginning to hate her thighs, singing to God at the top of her lungs.

She smiles at the saints hopefully and thinks of the two people in the tunnel. She remembers deciding she definitely wouldn't take _Faith and the Problem of Evil _next semester, and then deciding immediately afterward that she definitely will.

She feels heavy-hearted.

She's just started up the stairs when she remembers what she came to Sterling for last time.

_The porn stash, _she thinks, and feels momentarily annoyed that that _highly incorrect _descriptor for books from her History reading list seems to have stuck.

Her pulse races ahead of the irritation. She imagines Rachel lying down by the bed to take a nap or read Barbra or do her yogalates or any number of other things that she might do on the floor of her room. In her mind's eye she sees her turn to the right, make a curious kind of face, say artificially "I wonder what that is," out loud, reach under the bed and tug a book out and then another and then another until it becomes inescapable: Quinn Fabray has a fixation on the murder of the Jewish people and she keeps her literature hidden under her bed.

Quinn almost laughs. That has to be the most ridiculous thing she has ever worried about – _ever_. And she is a girl who was once a child who would iron her bed sheet smooth with a door-stopper at night because creases were out to get her.

She shakes her head at the memory and starts up the stairs again, and it's only then that she begins to imagine Rachel in her room right now finding other things – her things – things about her – all the things that suddenly might be secret even if she can't quite see why.

She turns around, has reached the bottom of the staircase before she processes that rushing back to the dorm, sweeping into her room, swooping the books out of there and telling Rachel she just dropped by to remind her not to touch or look closely at anything in her room is not a viable option at this point. Or ever.

Quinn grimaces, grabs the railing. She thinks Rachel probably is a bit of a snoop. She remembers back in high school: every time she showed up by her locker or burst into the bathroom or looked at her whilst singing; she always made Quinn feel like she was knocking on her door with a badge and a warrant.

The railing is wooden and smooth like church pews. She presses one palm against it, then adds the other. It's okay, she thinks soberly. Rachel may have issues with boundaries, but Quinn can't see her actually rifling through drawers or opening her mail. Because she's not a complete social cripple. Because she wouldn't be interested anyway. There is no reason why Rachel would be looking at anything.

_She probably isn't, _Quinn thinks. And then she thinks, _She's probably really bored._

Her eyes widen and she narrows them quickly.

Rachel might be bored in her room. She might go for a walk. She might come _here. _Quinn got some of her books from the Judaica Collections. Rachel is Jewish. What if Quinn goes upstairs to skulk uselessly and runs right into Rachel perusing one of her people's historical tomes with all the intent and innocence in the world.

Quite frankly, Quinn wants to slap herself. She would if it wouldn't make her look even more hysterical than she likely already does.

Being Jewish, she thinks in the calm, firm kind of way you tell a puppy to drop a shoe, does not necessarily mean you will have random impulses to visit the Jewish and Hebraic Collections in the library of whatever institution you happen to be visiting at the time.

It's not quite as idiotic as worrying that Rachel will think the Holocaust turns her on. But it is idiotic.

Besides, even if Rachel did come here, say, to scour the music library for an unread Barbra bio, it's unlikely that she would find Quinn. The place is huge, and there are so many people.

_There are so many people._

Quinn strolls casually to the doors, the way people stroll casually to doors when they've just bought drugs, or there's a body in the trunk of their car.

It's gotten cold out. The wind feels fresh. Quinn has about five seconds to appreciate it before it starts raining.

She looks up at the night sky and then back inside. She thinks she sees Joe, even though the guy she's looking at is nearly bald and pushing forty and probably a professor and she has never met him and perhaps never will.

She looks the other way, outward. A group of girls are approaching at high speed, squealing and holding their jackets over their heads.

Quinn hurries to a nearby building and by the time she gets there she's been thoroughly rained on.

She stands under the roof with her back against the wall, looks down at the drops plinking onto her shoes.

* * *

Rachel does watch. For a moment. She turns around to check the door code one more time and Quinn is already so far away she'd have to shout to get her attention – she's walking so _fast,_ Rachel thinks helplessly.

She feels like an idiot for forgetting the code already - and when Quinn told her twice.

She turns back to the door and keys in a combination that feels like it might be familiar.

4, 8, 9, 3.

The door doesn't budge.

She looks back again at Quinn's dwindling figure.

4, 8, 9, 2.

Nothing.

4, 8, 7, 3.

No.

Rachel sighs. Quinn's gone now. It probably wouldn't even help if she ran screaming and flailing. She has no idea where she's turned off.

Later she will wonder why she didn't just text her.

She thinks about trying 4, 8, 7, 2, but now she's just stabbing in the dark, and there are people walking past, and they might think she's trying to break in.

And she _is _trying to break in, isn't she? Into Quinn's life. Quinn's dorm. Quinn's friends. Quinn's… _thing_.

She never did say what she was doing. Rachel felt instinctively that she shouldn't ask.

She sighs again, stomps down the stairs and sits. It's at least a quarter of an hour till somebody comes out.

Rachel scrambles to her feet and catches the door.


	4. Chapter 4

Rachel feels melancholy. _Melancholy. _She says the word out loud. Sings it softly. Up a scale, then down.

You'd think she'd be good at being alone, being an only child. But she's not.

Sometimes she thinks that's why she loves an audience so much. Sometimes she thinks it's a way of being with people that's safe.

Safe, yes.

Normal people get stage fright and Rachel can understand why on an intellectual level, but she doesn't feel it – she never has. _Audition_ fright, sure. But anything's terrifying when you've convinced yourself your whole future rests on it. Performing in front of her peers at NYADA on Monday, _not _on a stage, but in a well-lit room, with chairs and faces, and absolutely no kind of shadowy moat between her and the people who will be discussing her performance in unflinching detail immediately following? Her palms are sweating just thinking about it.

But Rachel's never been afraid of an actual _audience, _in the traditional sense. An audience is just a nice, sturdy collection of human beings choosing to interact with you in the least dangerous way possible – the way where they watch and don't say anything. And sure, perhaps some of them might applaud less than they ought to, but it never gets any more personal than that outside of cartoon nightmares. Audiences don't _actually _throw rotten fruit at you.

Audiences are not teenagers with slushies.

And sometimes there are so many people in them that if you could take it one by one you might never run out.

_Pretend friends._

Rachel smiles. She used to have a lot of those. She remembers being 7, 8, 9? She opened the door and asked nobody how their day was, laughed, slammed the door shut, took an invisible coat.

She remembers her dad saying anxiously "She'll grow out of it." She remembers papa's wry reply: "She'll grow _into _it."

Rachel looks around Quinn's room and realizes she has always thought of her as being an only child too, even though she has always known she's not. It might be hindsight, but Rachel would say Quinn has always seemed sort of lonely to her, no matter whose arm she was on or how many red and white maids of honor bounced down the halls behind her. She even seemed lonely in the café earlier with all those brand new people around her.

The only difference is that she's good at it. Or she's better at it than Rachel is.

Quinn is better than her at a lot of things, she reminds herself. Rachel has the stronger voice, certainly, but these days she thinks maybe that's the only thing. And it's the only thing anyone ever notices.

Rachel scrunches her toes into the carpet. It's not very soft.

She's thinking of coffee and Quinn's new friends and how all the things she told them about Rachel Berry are all the things she can do.

She was happy in the café. Well, not while she was crying. But after. Specifically when Joe was talking about the perfect A5. She was happy for that moment.

It was a strange kind of thrill to know that she existed in Quinn's world when she wasn't there. But now she wonders exactly _how _she exists.

Is she 'Rachel Berry, may someday break glass with voice'? Or 'Rachel Berry, queue for autograph which may someday be valuable here'?

Quinn is always talking about Rachel's amazing future.

But what does she mean _now?_

Does she even mean anything at all?

She frowns and sinks down to the floor. The carpet isn't any softer on her hands. Her shoulders hurt.

She wonders what all the rest of the people at that table in that café mean now, and she wishes she'd taken the time to smell the roses back when Quinn was a baby-stealing mess. She should have known it would be fleeting, even if she hadn't been there to help it… fleet. Girls like Quinn – it's never long before they're back on top.

Rachel is not on top. Rachel feels weak and lonely and worried about Santana. Well, not _Santana_. What Quinn said about Santana.

_Next time you need a friend._

It seemed like she thought Rachel should have tried someone else first. Like maybe she shouldn't have come here except as a last resort and it wasn't a last resort because Santana was in New York and if Rachel didn't know then she should have asked someone – someone else maybe.

She cringes at the thought. She tells herself to stop; if that was true Quinn wouldn't have asked her in the first place. She wants to sigh or shake her head or roll her eyes, but it always feels a little silly doing those things when nobody else is there to see it.

Most people get embarrassed when they're being watched. Rachel gets embarrassed when she's not.

She gets up off the floor in several awkward stages, walks over to the window. The view is of a small car park, a dumpster and a row of hedges. She sits on the sill and looks out. She tries to understand why Quinn doesn't understand.

Santana is nice - there's three words she never thought she'd string together.

Santana is nice, but it's not the same. They made their friendship official at the eleventh hour. It was a gesture. It was kind of like you sign somebody's yearbook with x's and o's even though you never actually kissed or hugged them in your life – and then maybe you do hug – but only in a _Now that you mention it _kind of way.

Being friends with Santana is frosting, Rachel thinks. Quinn is the cake. That's the way she sees it. And that's why it wouldn't be the same. Even if she didn't think the idea of her strolling over to Santana's place for a cup of sugar was frankly ludicrous, Rachel knows that it wouldn't have worked.

Santana wouldn't have made her feel like everything was going to be okay.

Rachel presses her lips together. She tries not to notice that Quinn hasn't made her feel like everything is going to be okay either.

_It was a tall order, _she tells herself. She rests her cheek against the pane.

Melancholy.

_Mell Ahn Kohl Eeeeee, _she breathes, and the window fogs back at her. But even at her very worst, there's only so long at a time that Rachel can mope. It's less than thirty seconds before she's inclined to snoop instead.

She walks around the room a couple of times, thinks _You could get dizzy doing this, _heads over to the closet while she's thinking it with her hands clasped behind her back, releases a hand, pulls on the handle and lets the closet door swing open by itself. She tells herself she just wants to check her coat pockets for gum.

She runs a hand lightly along the multi-colored curtain of clothing and decides some of the fabrics feel prohibitively expensive. There are a lot of blazers and skirts that would come to Quinn's knees, and she thinks, with a tentative smile, _Some things never change, _even though a small part of her fully expected to find the rail stuffed with red and white polyester.

She recognizes the dress Quinn wore under her gown at graduation. It was a purply kind of gray, with blue butterflies on it, and Rachel remembers it because she remembers thinking how Quinn waited till they all got to Breadstix to take the gown off. She remembers wondering if it was supposed to be a metaphor.

That's the thing about Quinn. She's always and never the same.

Rachel runs her hand up the sleeve of one of the blazers. It makes her nervous. She's this close to playing dress-ups. She shuts the closet door, turns around, and changes the subject with herself.

_My song, _she thinks, valiantly.

It doesn't work. Her mind slips quickly back to blazers and how they make her nervous, and she's remembering the girls' bathroom down the hall from the Science lab at McKinley. She's remembering telling Quinn that Finn proposed and Quinn saying "You can't," and how the black blazer she was wearing then felt smooth and tough when she hugged her.

_You can't._

She hasn't thought about that conversation since she had it – literally – not even when Quinn was singing about saying goodbye and giving advice to the group that was very pointed – at her – especially not then.

And yet she feels like the words have been ringing in her ears ever since.

_Who says that?_ Rachel huffs half-heartedly.

And then she wonders why Quinn isn't more pleased with herself.

She must have noticed that the ring is gone.

Rachel's hands are behind her back again.

She took it off when she was leaving New York - suddenly– in between packing underwear and taking out a fourth blouse that was clearly unnecessary for a two day visit. She tricked herself into it, she thinks. It was at the bottom of a sock at the bottom of her bottom drawer before she could think, and when she did think she thought _It'll be safer here, that's all._

It wasn't true though.

The truth is…

The truth is something Rachel would rather not admit.

The truth is Quinn is right. She _wasn't _right in the bathroom. She wasn't right at the bridal boutique either. But even Rachel will admit that she is right now. Because now Finn _is _an anchor. Now he's a dead weight.

And it's not Rachel's fault, _it's not. _She's been adamant with herself about that at least once an hour since she took the ring off. Finn's the one who thinks it's best if they don't speak, and how can you be engaged to someone you feel like you shouldn't even call when your world is falling apart?

Rachel unclasps her hands and holds them out in front of her body. She looks down at her ring finger and feels sad that she didn't even have time to get a tan-line.

She feels silly, too. Because she was bracing herself for Quinn's reaction when she noticed, and there's been nothing – no condescending smile, no pat on the back, no _That's my girl._

She's been so angry with Quinn for trying to control her. (And for being _good at it_.)

Maybe she wasn't, really. Maybe she isn't anymore.

Rachel bites her lip, shrugs out of her cardigan, then back into it. She can't decide whether it's hot or cold in here. She glances at Quinn's desk. There's a tall pile of books on it that are in the kind of largest to smallest order that doesn't happen by accident. They look like a sculpture, Rachel thinks. Her lamp is green. There's letter paper peeping out the sides of a large leather day planner. That's all she can look at without touching.

She flops down on Quinn's bed, stands up again quickly and flops down on hers – the pile of blankets on the floor she'll be insisting on sleeping on later tonight.

She sighs heavily, and before her thoughts can collect in the aftermath, she crawls over to her nightstand, turns it back into a case, pulls out her ipod.

She'll listen to music. That will help. That will be helpful.

It's not. Because suddenly every song on her ipod sounds sad. Even the version of _La Bamba _she recorded herself, and she was _happy _when she sang that.

It was the night Finn took her bowling way back in sophomore year when they were first in Glee. When she was first in love with him.

When she got home she went straight upstairs to her room, grabbed her microphone and karaoked it. She remembers jumping on every note – that's why she sounds a little out of breath towards the end – and there's a really wonky G5 along the way. But she never had the heart to delete the file.

Rachel's a perfectionist, but she's also a sentimental fool. And that was one of the happiest nights of her life, she thinks.

Of course the next day when she found out Quinn was pregnant was right up there with that time she screwed up _Rain On My Parade_ twice in a row.

_All's well that ends well, _Rachel thinks bitterly. She got NYADA. She got Finn.

Except it wasn't the end. And Rachel was so sure it would be – she was so sure it had to be – she was so sure that nothing could stop them.

Because it didn't matter that Finn's girlfriend had a baby that wasn't his but was his best friend's who was also making out with Rachel. It didn't matter they split up and he and Rachel got together, and in the end Quinn gave the baby to Rachel's biological mother who had given her to her dads 16 years ago, and then Finn and Rachel split up because Rachel kissed the father of Quinn's baby again, and then Quinn got back together with Finn even though they never had a baby at all, and they went to prom together and Quinn slapped Rachel and Rachel fixed her makeup for her and told her how pretty she was.

These are all things Rachel liked to think of as water under the bridge. She liked to think that the bizarre love quadrangle she and Finn and Puck and Quinn had going on in high school had been tugged out into a straight line.

Finn plus Rachel equals Forever.

She wishes it was that simple. God knows she tried to make it that simple.

The ipod's on shuffle. Leann Rimes is telling her that if she'd never seen someone's face she probably wouldn't be this way.

Rachel tugs the buds out of her ears so violently that it sort of hurts.

She presses stop and locks the ipod, presses her palms to her eyes and concentrates hard on not crying.

When she's sure the moment has passed, she carefully removes her hands from her eyes. She blinks as the room comes into focus again. It seems much brighter than it did before. She wishes the switch had a dimmer. It doesn't seem right to be melancholy in full light.

She gets up and walks over to the switch at the door, turns it off and shuffles in the dark over to Quinn's desk. She hits it with a little bump to her hipbone, mutters _Ouch, _feels her way along the cool wood to the cold metal of the lamp and flicks the switch on it.

It's heavily shaded. Rachel thinks if it you could get it to blink at irregular intervals it would be like having a fire in the hearth.

(She has always wanted a hearth and a fire in it. She likes the idea of trying to get as close as you can without getting burned.)

She stretches her arms up and yawns. She tips her head from side to side. She pulls the chair out and sits at Quinn's desk.

Rachel wonders if a day planner counts as a journal. She supposes it does. Or it might – and you wouldn't know till you started reading it. She knows that reading someone's journal is bad. If her dads hadn't schooled her properly on that issue then Finn would have made up for it. One time he made a joke about writing his innermost thoughts and feelings down, and Rachel made what she will insist to her dying day was a joke too about reading them. "That's so not cool, Rachel," he said, with that look on his face like he'd realized she wasn't as normal as he'd thought she was.

Rachel heaves a sigh that slumps her body over the desk and the day planner that might be a journal.

That's what she's afraid of, really. That Finn thinking she's going to be a star and it's something she needs to do without him is just a nice way of saying she's not normal enough to be his wife.

_If that was true he wouldn't have asked you in the first place, _she reminds herself. And then she thinks, with a sudden pang, _He only asked me because of his dad._

Rachel has spent so long telling herself that she didn't say yes because she didn't have anything else. She said yes over and over again when she had it all just to prove it.

It's quite a shock to realize that Finn basically did the same thing.

She swallows hard. She's clutching the day planner. She can feel the edges of the loose sheets of paper crumpling under her fingers.

He said he was excited about Georgia. _Excited. _Rachel thinks self-pityingly that she was excited about NYADA. She thinks guiltily that it was fine when she was excited about life without Finn, but it isn't fine the other way around.

She's going to start crying. She presses her palms to her closed eyes again and counts to three, and when she peels them away tears slip down onto the planner's leather cover.

She pulls the sleeve of her cardigan down into her hand and wipes them away.

And then she swivels around in the chair and cries for a little while.

When she's done, she looks over at the clock on Quinn's nightstand. It's 9:15. She thinks Quinn should be back soon before realizing that Quinn never actually told her how long she would be. For all Rachel knows she could be out all night.

She pouts, and again, it feels a little silly with no one there to see it.

She should just go to bed, she thinks. It's been a long and disappointing day. She feels hurt – she's too tired to deny it anymore. She feels heartbroken, actually. Of course she does, she reminds herself. It's been less than 10 hours since she took off Finn's ring for the first time since he gave it to her.

Rachel kicks the bottom of the chair a couple of times angrily.

She's about to give in and get her toothbrush when she gets the idea to rearrange Quinn's book sculpture and see if she notices that.

She swivels back around and gets to work.

She decides to start at the bottom, sending them all tumbling like the end of a game of Jenga. The three biggest books have glossy covers and titles with _An Introduction To _in front of them. The next one is shabby, with a plain cloth cover and nothing written on it at all. Rachel opens it to the front page, which tells her it is _Jude The Obscure _by Thomas Hardy. She's heard of Thomas Hardy. She's pretty sure she pretended she knew things about him in one of her English papers in senior year.

She casts it aside and moves onto the smaller volumes. _What Is History _by E.H. Carr. She frowns.

_What kind of a question is that?_

She puts it in the 'No' pile.

She discards a couple more books before finding one that makes her pause long enough to look inside.

_An Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry._

It's not the title that makes her curious. It's the abundance of pink and yellow sticky notes poking out the top.

_You can't keep a journal on sticky notes, _she thinks, reasonably, and _I could go into any bookstore and read this all… willy nilly._

_Willy nilly!_

She smiles to herself as she begins flipping through, letting the book fall open at the marked pages.

It's a let-down. She has no idea what a Tollund Man is before or after reading two to three verses of a poem about one, and T.S. Eliot is just nonsense. There is one poem she might like - she's pretty sure she's read it before - but she doesn't want to think about dark woods and promises and having miles to go right now. Still, it's nothing compared to this one called 'Howl' which actually turns her stomach. She stops reading when the guy starts yelling _Molloch! _at her over and over. She sits quietly for a while, confused and queasy.

The notes Quinn's written in the margins aren't helpful or entertaining. It's a whole lot of b's and a's in various orders, which Rachel is pretty sure are just rhyme schemes, the word sibilance, which Rachel doesn't know, assonance, which she does – that's vowels – references to the 'Metaphysicals' which she thinks for a moment might be a band but then decides it's probably not when she sees something about the seventeenth century.

They could have been minstrels, she supposes.

She thumbs the pages like a harp – like her dad used to do with those little picture books to show her where her cartoons came from.

She yawns.

She's about to start piling the books up again when she sees a page that doesn't have a sticky note on it, but is dog-eared with a sharp crease. There's a note in the margin in slightly larger writing than the rest, still unmistakably Quinn's.

It says 'Yes. This.'

Rachel reads:

Since I lost you I am silence-haunted,  
Sounds wave their little wings  
A moment, then in weariness settle  
On the flood that soundless swings.

"Soundless swings," Rachel whispers, "settle on the flood that soundless swings."

She raises her voice and her chin, looks down at the page over her cheeks and recites:

Whether the people in the street  
Like pattering ripples go by,  
Or whether the theatre sighs and sighs  
With a loud, hoarse sigh:

Or the wind shakes a ravel of light  
Over the dead-black river,  
Or night's last echoing  
Makes the daybreak shiver:

I feel the silence –

The word is a command. She stops. The rest is only in her head.

- waiting  
To take them all up again  
In its vast completeness, enfolding  
The sound of men.

Rachel frowns. She looks down, rereads the whole thing.

What is "this"? she wonders. She raises an eyebrow. _This _is… what?

It's certainly something.

Rachel swallows hard.

Suddenly she thinks it's something she's missing. Suddenly she wishes she was going to a real college – a college where they told you what history was and explained how some words are beautiful and others are not but are still worth printing and buying and having to read.

She's always been proud of her scholastic achievements. A 4.0 whilst participating in seventeen extra curricular activities is nothing to be sniffed at. But it was a means to an end. All the hard work was all about NYADA. Who knows why they wanted her to be able to solve quadratic equations before she could sing on Broadway, but they did. And so she learned how.

But it didn't matter to her. Nothing except Glee Club mattered to her.

Rachel looks back and knows she has read at least eight classic novels and taken nothing away from them except what her teacher wanted her to take – except what would get her the big red A at the top of the paper.

She wrote a paper on _Ode to a Nightingale _and knows nothing about it. She picked the poem because it was about a singing bird. She summarized what the teacher said about it and added some long words she found in a review of the movie 'Bright Star'. That was it. Big red A.

She looks down at the book in her hands, at the page Quinn has creased. No wonder she doesn't understand any of this. No wonder she doesn't know what Quinn means by _Yes. This._

All she does is sing and dance, Rachel thinks, and all of a sudden that's a bad thing.

She shuts the book and starts reassembling Quinn's sculpture – largest to smallest – just the way she found it, give or take the bottom two which are exactly the same size. _Even the songs I sing, _she thinks as she's piling them up, _even them._

She's never really paid attention to the words except to feel them in her mouth. The music tells her what's happy, what's sad, what's any shade of feelings in between. The only time the words have ever told Rachel anything of any real importance was when she wrote them herself.

She cared about _Get It Right _because it was hers.

And yet, she wonders if she didn't even understand that. She wonders now if her own words meant something entirely different from what she thought they should when she wrote them.

Is _this_ getting it right? Finn being excited about Georgia? Rachel sitting alone in Quinn's room at a real college, waiting?

Is this how it was meant to be all along?

That's what Rachel wants to know.

She walks over to the window in the half dark, sits on the sill, looks out.


	5. Chapter 5

Quinn worries that she seemed stand-offish in those first muddled minutes when Rachel showed up at her door. She worries that she seemed inconvenienced - irritated – _cold?_ – just flat out not happy to see her.

Ordinarily she would tell herself not to dwell on it, because Rachel wouldn't dwell on it – because Rachel has always been quick to forgive her reserve – quite adept at ignoring it altogether, in fact.

But she has spent the past two hours hiding, and Rachel thinks she has spent the past two hours being too busy for her, and that can only have compounded the impression – the inconvenienced impression – and Quinn regrets it – the impression, and any and all choices that have created it. When she scrubs her wet, muddy sneakers against the mat downstairs, she regrets, wholly, bodily. And then when she opens the door to her room, impossibly, she regrets even more.

It's 10:15. Rachel is sitting on the window sill and staring out.

Quinn was quiet when she turned the handle, so as not to disturb Rachel if she'd already gone to bed – she was hoping that she would already have gone to bed, and hating herself for hoping it, and in the few beats that Rachel didn't notice her standing in the doorway she saw her pull her sleeve down into her hand, reach up to her face, her head bowing in time.

When she turns, Quinn says, "I like to call it a room with a view of Yale's ass."

Rachel looks puzzled and Quinn feels her cheeks flush, thinks she's lucky that it never quite reaches her skin when they do. "I mean in a gross way, not in a sexy way," she clarifies.

Rachel says "Oh," and then she smiles.

There's a beat in which it feels like neither of them quite knows which way to go next, and Quinn is thinking of how people sometimes dart apologetically at each other on busy streets, she's thinking of wide roads and intersections and looking the wrong way when things come crashing down.

"I brought hot chocolate," she says, as brightly as she can, and "Yours has soy milk," careful to be paying attention to the door and her bag over her shoulder and her faintly damp hair and the cardboard tray in her hand – careful to be looking the wrong way at anything but Rachel's miserable silhouette and the redness she fears she will see round her eyes when she dares to focus on her properly.

"Ohhh!" Rachel exclaims pleasantly. It sounds faintly nasal.

"It's more lukewarm chocolate actually," Quinn admits. "The best café – the one we should have gone to – it's behind the gym, and it's quite a walk." She smiles, pushes her faintly damp hair out of her eyes, sneaks an anxious glance at Rachel's face as she hands her her cup. "I didn't sip mine on the way though, so we're both in the same lukewarm boat."

Rachel takes the chocolate in a grateful sort of way that sort of makes Quinn feel terrible for leaving and definitely makes her want to leave again, right now. She sits down on the bed, slips her shoes off, settles herself.

It's dark. Rachel only has her desk lamp on. There's a marshmallow in Quinn's chocolate. She feels like she's round a campfire.

"It's good," Rachel says, sipping, and "Thank you." She frowns. "The gym?"

Quinn frowns back.

"Was that where…" Rachel hesitates, rephrases, "How was your… uh… thing… the thing that you had?"

"My meeting," Quinn corrects. It doesn't make things better. She very much wants to make things better. So, in haste, she embellishes, determined to make the thing – the meeting - seem important – unmissable, in fact. "It was fine – it was great – it's for drama, you know?" She brings her cup to her lip, says quickly, "Drama club," drinks, wishes it was something stronger, wonders if lies go smoother when you're intoxicated, makes a mental note to try it out some time on Joe.

Joe won't mind.

Rachel is abruptly cheerful. It would be unnerving if Quinn didn't already know how quickly her mood could change - if she didn't already know that Rachel is essentially happiness in a human being, and when she is sad it is only that happiness is holding the line.

She's clapping her hands – or she's clapping the cup in her hands – she's saying "I _knew _you couldn't be doing _no _acting at all," – she's asking her six questions in quick succession, all along the lines of _Tell me everything you know about drama club. _

Quinn keeps her answers short and adorned with shrugs and wide smiles – probably too short, too many shrugs, too much smiling. Maybe she's not the actress she thought she was, but then, she reminds herself, she is ad-libbing – and she shouldn't be – she really doesn't want to be – she doesn't want to be sitting here round an imaginary campfire in her dorm room drinking lukewarm chocolate and ad-libbing at Rachel.

She gulps the chocolate down and answers Rachel's seventh question with "Oh hey it's late I'm going to go use the bathroom." One sentence, no pauses.

Rachel looks at her like she might have been going to tag along but thought better of it, and Quinn is out the door before she can change her mind back.

* * *

Quinn worries. She worries about the inconvenienced impression and she worries about the bad ad-libbing and she worries about the fact that Rachel won't let her sleep on the floor all the way back to her room and all the way into bed.

She ran into Rachel outside the bathroom and held the door for her awkwardly, tried to say goodnight while she was doing it. Rachel was wearing what Quinn could only think of a nightie – an actual _nightie_ – it was white and kind of starchy and came down to her knees and had a lace trim and was altogether freakishly similar to the ones her mother used to order from European catalogues in the 80's.

She let go of the door.

It nearly smacked into Rachel's head, and Quinn thought _Really? I learned my lesson about texting and driving, but surely I can still hold doors and speak at the same time?_

Rachel dropped her toiletries bag dodging the door. It was unzipped, everything spilled out, and the two of them fell to the floor and began feverishly snatching at bottles, tubes, q-tips, little sparkly hairclips, and shoving them back into the bag like they were looting a store.

Quinn tugs at her flannel pajama pants. They're making their own creases and she doesn't like it. She wonders how much longer Rachel is going to be and whether it would be fair to be asleep when she came in. She thinks _It's Hurricane Katrina_ _and I am a bad person. _

When they stood up at the bathroom door somehow Quinn ended up holding the bag. Rachel eyed it nervously and said "Sorry," and Quinn quickly returned it to her, shaking her head.

Rachel looked flustered and embarrassed.

Quinn is angry about that. Rachel has no right to any embarrassment. It is all hers.

She pulls the covers up over her shoulders and turns her face to the wall. She turns back around, pulls her pillow out from under her head and drops it down on top of her other one on Rachel's makeshift bed.

When Rachel comes back into the room she turns off the light without asking. Then she gets into bed and whispers _Goodnight, _and all Quinn has to do is whisper it back.

She's glad.

And she's glad her body is sensible about sleep.

* * *

Rachel's body is sensible about few things and sleep is not one of them. She doesn't think there's a test or an audition or a performance she's ever done when she hasn't been tired – the eye-patch and the rigidly set alarm clock, these are both weapons in her fight against insomnia.

It's not that she's scared exactly – the stage is her friend, every day is an opportunity, she comes fully prepared, no quiz can stop her, all that. It's more that she can't switch herself off – or _turn _herself off. She's like a faucet that's been screwed around so hard that it's just stuck there on full Rachel, gushing away.

Tonight, though… tonight she's scared, maybe, a little.

She stares up at the ceiling for a long time. And then she stares at the wall. And then she stares at the shadowy space under Quinn's bed.

Something's not right. And it's as though the more she's aware of that, the smaller the room becomes and the harder it is to breathe quietly.

Something's not right about drama club.

At dinner Quinn didn't just say she wasn't taking any acting classes. She said, quite definitely, and with the kind of dismissive wave of her hand that did not allow for gray areas, "I'm not doing any of that stuff yet."

Rachel suddenly wishes she looked in Quinn's planner when she was out. Then just as suddenly she feels relieved that she didn't.

She pulls her pillow down into her arms and realizes there are two. Quinn's must have fallen down. She grabs it and sits up, edges it carefully toward the back of Quinn's head till it's nestled safely next to her. Quinn doesn't stir.

Rachel lies back down and clutches the remaining pillow like it's a stuffed animal.

_It could be an animal, _she thinks, _some kind of oblong-type animal with multiple birth defects. _She draws her knees up into a full-body hug, thinks anxiously, _I'd still love it. _

She's wondering if there's ever been a baby rhino born without ears or eyes or a mouth or a tail, she's thinking how the tail probably wouldn't matter too much, but it might be a struggle without all the rest, especially a mouth, everybody needs to eat, she's doing everything she can to breathe through her nose only, she's trying not to wonder if she's made a big mistake coming to New Haven.

_I should have called, _she thinks, and before she can stop herself, _Normal people call._

But Rachel doesn't call – she doesn't plan – she doesn't wait. 'When in doubt, do'. (That's something she will probably write along with her autograph that may someday be valuable.) And the thing is that usually once she has _done, _that's it. It's over.

It's just that a weekend isn't something you can do any quicker than, well, a weekend. And Quinn's two hour absence at "drama club" gave her far too much time to think.

And _now. _Now she thinks maybe Quinn's thing wasn't drama club. She thinks maybe Quinn was just trying to make her feel better when she said that. She thinks maybe she was really off doing something with her new friends. Like maybe they were reading poetry to each other or figuring out what history is, and Quinn didn't want Rachel around sniveling about NYADA and embarrassing her with her raccoon eyes every five minutes.

She remembers feeling touched in the café when Quinn leaned in and started fixing her makeup – figuratively touched as well as literally touched, obviously. She remembers feeling… close… connected. For a second or two.

And then she realized Quinn was looking past her and rubbing so vigorously that it almost hurt, and then there were all those people at the table and Rachel thought _Oh, _and she thinks she might have said "This is why I shouldn't buy cheap eyeliner," and "Sorry," and she thinks maybe Quinn wasn't listening because she didn't say it was okay.

Maybe she was listening to the blonde girl who'll see her Tuesday now.

Rachel sighs heavily at all the sense that sentence does not make.

_Maybe_, she thinks assertively, Quinn was doing something else that she didn't want to tell Rachel about. Something she honestly had to do that had nothing to do with having fun with people who are not her. Rachel reminds herself, fairly, that it's not a crime for Quinn to not want to tell her things. She reminds herself that the reason normal people call is exactly so that other normal people can clear their schedules, and sometimes if you don't call they can't clear.

She reminds herself that she trusts Quinn. She trusts her like you trust a rollercoaster.

So why can't she shake the feeling that she's bothering her just by being here?

She tells herself – mouths it silently three times - _Don't be silly, silly, she gave you the ticket, she wanted you to come. _

But what if that's changed?

Could it have changed, so soon?

The words _It's only been a few months _gather uncomfortably in her mind. She expels them.

_Out, out._

Rachel frowns. She sits up in bed. The comforter Quinn borrowed from someone down the hall has a nylon cover, and it rustles loudly in the silence. It sort of glows in the dark, too.

Quinn has turned over to face her, eyes closed, breathing even and deep. Rachel studies the side of her face, as if in sleep Quinn might tell her all the things she thinks but doesn't say.

_It's so great that you're here. _

Rachel mouths it for her. She shakes her head as she does.

The room feels small and too warm. She might be breathing too close. The longer she looks at Quinn the more she sees.

Her cheek is pressed awkwardly into her pillow in a way that squashes her lips together like a fish, and Rachel's pretty sure she can see the dim glisten of drool lit up in blue by the neon numbers on the clock.

Rachel grins – almost laughs in the way where you make noise. She lies back down and burrows under the comforter.

_Human after all, _she thinks, her knuckles pressed against her lips.

She feels better. She feels less alone.

And still, it's gone three in the morning before her body finally succumbs.

* * *

Quinn feels like more of a girl than she ever has in her occasionally resplendently girly life. She's tiptoeing down the corridor before dawn, toothbrush in one hand, paste in the other, ready to shove them both into the pocket of her hoodie if anyone leaps out of their room to say Hi.

It's just that sometimes her body is sensible about personal hygiene and wakes her up at half past five. It's just that she doesn't believe in having morning breath with anyone ever.

This is one of the reasons she thinks she will probably never get married, or if she does it will need to be to someone who has the courtesy to pretend to be asleep every morning for the rest of their lives while she brushes her teeth.

The bathroom door swings open with an almighty creak. She remembers telling her mother she'd never get married when she was an age she can't find the right number for. She remembers her mother sending her to her room.

While Quinn brushes her teeth – up at the roots, gentle circles, one, two, three, four – she wonders what her mother would say now. She's spending two days a week with a hard-faced lawyer and two more trying to remember things the hard-faced lawyer said.

Quinn spits, rinses her mouth out, drinks from the faucet.

She looks at herself in the mirror for a moment. She didn't turn the lights on. She can barely see.

She thinks _Nobody's sending me to my room._ And then she hurries back down the corridor like people in balaclavas hurry down corridors, edges round the door she left ajar, closes it gingerly and climbs back into bed.

She still has the hoodie on and the brush and the paste are still in the pocket. The brush is wet. She's not sure she screwed the lid on the paste firmly enough. Somehow she decides it's best to just not move a muscle.

She stares up at the ceiling. She's going to guess it's 5:36. She's going to guess it's still another 24 minutes till Rachel's phone wakes her up. (She warned her at dinner last night that it would start playingher "morning song" at 6am sharp, and that she would need to exercise immediately but she would try to do so as unobtrusively as possible.)

Quinn smiles. She thinks she is still smiling when suddenly someone is telling her loudly not to break her stride, and her eyes focus blearily on the outline of Rachel Berry, in her room, in the thin light of dawn, clad in a white linen and lace nightie, an eye-patch pushed up into her hair, a look of fierce determination on her face, hoisting two tiny pink dumbbells to a beat.

Quinn laughs. She can't help it. She is usually good at containing her reactions where necessary, but this – this vision of demure, starry-eyed fury – it has come on too suddenly and it is too much.

She laughs and laughs and laughs without even sitting up in bed.

"What?" Rachel says, breaking nothing but a mild sweat, "You don't have a" – huff – "morning ritual?" – huff – "You must have one – a lengthy and complex" – huff – "one." Huff. "No one is that" – huff – "pretty without making some" – huff – "effort."

Quinn doesn't answer. She's still too busy _laughing and laughing and laughing _and she's not sure what she would say to that if she wasn't. She's used to people paying her compliments, but nobody has ever done it with such unashamed regularity and boldness as Rachel.

The song switches off, some forty seconds in, but Rachel keeps on going like there's a metronome in her head – of _course _there's a metronome in her head – and Quinn keeps on pressing her face into her pillow and laughing – pretending to laugh, maybe, just a little.

The moment she's fully awake is when she starts to feel guilty. She put it on hold last night, but now it's back, clamoring for her attention – the lie she told (all the lies she's told in her life), and, in the distance, lingering, the reason she told it that she still doesn't know.

She swallows. Her throat has gone dry and she just had water half an hour ago in the bathroom. It's awful to wake up and be happy, she thinks, because when you remember all the things that are wrong in the world it makes the happiness seem like it was only a dream.

And then, immediately, she thinks she is the sappiest, whiniest, shoe-gaziest, grossest college freshman on earth.

She pushes her face into her pillow and abruptly wonders how the hell it got back onto her bed.

She _did _give it to Rachel last night, didn't she?

_She's sure she gave it to Rachel._

She turns her head to the side and eyes her suspiciously through her hair.

She's doing some very vigorous lunges and her knees keep getting caught in the hem of her nightie. She notices Quinn noticing and says "I really" – huff – "shouldn't have packed" – huff – "my good sleepwear" – huff.

Quinn smiles a smile that is an echo of laughter. She sits up and reaches for the glass by her bed and gulps down all the water in it. By the time she's done with that Rachel's on the floor, and Quinn thinks _Is this what yogalates looks like?_

Rachel's ass is pointing at the ceiling. The rest of her is pointing down. Without quite meaning to Quinn asks "What… is that?"

Rachel looks up, with difficulty. "Dog pose," she pants.

Quinn smiles tentatively. "Isn't yoga supposed to be peaceful?" she asks.

"Well sure," Rachel groans, sliding down to the floor on her stomach, "In the way where any extreme physical exertion is peaceful."

She's stretched out like an arrow. Quinn thinks if her feet were on the ground Rachel's hands would be close enough to grab them. She wraps them over each other under the covers. She doesn't say anything.

Rachel is lifting her legs and arms up off the floor in a steady, quick rhythm and balancing on her stomach. It looks like something out of the ballet classes Quinn used to take when she was younger, though she's fairly sure whatever it was she used to do was more graceful. And she was always appropriately attired.

Quinn presses her lips together. Anyone watching might think she was trying not to laugh. She isn't. Rachel is wriggling with the effort of every movement, and each time she does her nightie falls further down the backs of her thighs.

It's so… _embarrassing. _If she keeps going much longer Quinn will be able to see her… lower under-garment.

Her brow furrows uncomfortably. She has never liked the word 'panties'. It sounds dirty. She feels dirty. She's remembering that time Rachel sold her not-panties to Jacob Israel to stop him from telling everyone about the baby. Her throat constricts. She looks at the wall. Rachel says, "Hey Quinn, what is this library under your bed?" and then Quinn is out from under the covers, pulling the toothpaste and brush out of her hoodie pocket and depositing them on her nightstand.

Her hands come to rest on her clock. It's 6:14 and she's holding on. She's not sure what Rachel's doing now but it's noisy. She says "They're just books for history," and she thinks how straightforward is something she has fought so hard to be with Rachel. She thinks how it's something Rachel once said she needed.

"Rachel," she says suddenly and with strength, like she's about to make a speech. And she is, she supposes. Her mouth still feels unreasonably dry. She wishes she had more water. And palm cards.

She turns her head and looks at Rachel, who is looking at her curiously. She says "What is it?" and then she drops to the floor where she's standing. She's cross-legged between her dumbbells, looking up with a ready kind of expression on her face. It's cute and unsettling.

Quinn clears her throat. "So…" she says briskly, "I was lying. I didn't have a meeting last night. I'm not in any drama club. I spent my evening hiding out alternately between the shelves in the nearest library and outside in the rain, and I walked fifteen minutes out of my way back home to get us the best chocolate, mostly in order to kill time, but also because I felt extremely guilty and thought maybe good chocolate would help you, me, or both of us."

"It did," Rachel assures her, "I felt much better."

Quinn frowns. "I was lying, Rachel," she reiterates.

Rachel just nods.

There's a long pause in which neither of them moves or says anything, and then Quinn says all at once "Aren't you going to ask me why?"

Rachel shakes her head but complies. "Why did you lie, Quinn?" she asks, and Quinn replies promptly, like she prepared the answer earlier, even though she really, really didn't.

"I don't know," she says, and she thinks it's not exactly a tough answer to prepare. It's the Cup-a-Soup of answers.

Rachel's looking at the door. She's on her knees. She mutters "So then why did you ask me to ask?"

"That's a good question," Quinn says. She sighs, stands up, walks over to the window. She tells Rachel half of something about how she felt – the useless half – exposition only. Then she looks out for too long.

When she senses Rachel standing up behind her, she turns, quickly, says "The thing is that we've never actually spent more than ten minutes at a time alone together."

Rachel flinches. Visibly. And Quinn's eyes widen.

_Leanne. She's thinking of Leanne and the room transfer._

"No!" Quinn says loudly. "No, I _don't _mean I don't want to."

She looks down. Somewhere along the way she has crossed the room and grabbed Rachel's wrist. She swings it back and forth for something to do and then places it back at Rachel's side.

There is absolutely nothing nonchalant about it.

Rachel is looking at her like she just told her Brittany wasn't just being Brittany; she can actually fly and breathe fire.

Quinn folds her arms and says, "I don't mean I don't want to spend more than ten minutes with you."

Rachel smiles slowly. She takes her wrist in her own hand and rubs it a couple of times, gently.

Quinn wonders if she hurt her. She says something that starts with "I guess I just felt sort of…" She forgets the rest.

_Exposition again. Useless. _

Her lip twitches. She shrugs. She rolls her right ankle. She looks away.

And then Rachel says, "I made you nervous," like it's the best joke she's ever heard, and Quinn smiles immediately. She can't help it. She presses her palm to her forehead, and it slides down to her mouth when Rachel goes on to say, "That's honestly the best joke I've ever heard."

That's when they both laugh and everything is better – that's when everything is going to be okay.

Rachel says "Come here," or she holds her arms out or it's a combination of the two. They hug, and Quinn finds herself closing her eyes tightly, letting out a skittering breath, thinking, in a rhythm, _Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. _

Before she opens her eyes she says, "Why is it such a joke?" And before she pulls away Rachel says "_Cheerleader Quinn Fabray._"

"I'm not though," Quinn says, stretching and shaking her hair out. She takes her mascara and lipstick out of her purse, leans down to the little mirror on her desk and switches the lamp on. "McKinley is old news," she says, in the distracted, taut way people say things when they're concentrating on their eyelashes and trying to keep their mouth open.

Rachel snorts, balls yesterday's socks up and gets more out of her case. "Did you think you were going to be significantly less intimidating at _Yale?_" she asks.

Quinn sighs – mock-sighs, maybe. "Exactly what do I have to do to be likeable, Rachel?" she asks, "Eat more cheeseburgers? Wear polyester?" She waves the wand around for effect, even though she can see in the mirror that Rachel is busy with her feet, "Watch the Twilight movies?"

"You should _definitely _watch the Twilight movies," Rachel says, jumping up. Her socks are pink. She says with a worrying degree of sincerity, "They will change your life."

Quinn groans and smacks her lips together. "I don't want anybody to change my life but me."

"Right," Rachel says, and "Of course."

Quinn can see her in the mirror. She's buttoning a red cardigan. She sounds happy. She looks thoughtful. She abandons her buttons and smiles – at the mirror – at Quinn - and Quinn stands up and turns around, and when she does, she is still smiling.

"So," Rachel says brightly, "I'm in sweaty sleepwear with socks on and you're putting on make-up. Are either of us actually going to shower this morning?"

Quinn pauses. Her breath was fresh. It tricked her into thinking the rest of her was. She grimaces. "Right," she says, "You go first."

Rachel already has last night's miserable toiletries bag in her hands under a pile of clean clothes. She's standing at the door with the widest smile. Her new socks are still on.

"When I come back," she says, "You can tell me what's for breakfast around here."


	6. Chapter 6

What's for breakfast around here, as it turns out, is coffee and grease. Rachel can't help wrinkling her nose at just about everything the cafeteria has to offer, from the heavily sugared yogurts, _all _of which are made with cow,_ none _of which are made with bean, to the vigorously pre-buttered toast, to the fruit salad that consists entirely of white fruits, none of which are supposed to be white, to the slobbering heaps of egg and slaughtered piglet.

_Ugh._

At the diner on the corner of her dorm in New York they have gluten-free bagels and vegan muffins and soy banana smoothies. She tells Quinn this, with some longing, and it's probably rude, but, she thinks merrily, Quinn doesn't have a leg to stand on in that area.

Rachel frowns sternly at the expression, then even more sternly when the cook comes out and dumps a tray's worth of sausages on top of the mushrooms.

She can be as rude as she likes, she decides. She's not the one who spent the night hiding from her friend in a library and/or the rain. "Do they even have soy milk?" she asks Quinn, and Quinn asks the girl at the register.

Rachel grins. It's like having a get out of jail free card.

She thinks those are probably the best thing about Monopoly. She's never played. Her dads didn't believe in pastimes - that is to say things you do just to pass the time. Everything was a project, since before Rachel even knew what a project was. The moment she was old enough to watch cartoons her dads were trying to get her to make her own.

When she was seven and still got invited to birthday parties, she stole a dollar bill from her not-really-friend Susan's family's set and tried to buy candy with it.

There's Monopoly in the common room at Quinn's dorm. And Clue. And scrabble. And The Game Of Life.

Quinn motions for Rachel to sit down. A moment later she appears with a bowl of Rice Krispies and a carton of soy milk. All she has for herself is coffee.

"Do you normally not eat?" Rachel asks her, curiously.

Quinn shrugs. "Sometimes they have grapefruit," she says. She sighs. "Look at this dump," she says suddenly. "Why are we in this dump?"

Rachel smiles at the way she said it – with the kind of miserable astonishment you might express at failing a really, really easy quiz. "Back home, I had Rice Krispies every morning," she says soothingly, "And watermelon. Or raspberries. With pomegranate seeds. Any combination really, but it was always all red."

Quinn looks amused and bewildered at that. She stirs sugar into her coffee and nudges a sachet toward Rachel's mug. "Why?" she asks, "Why does it have to be red?"

"It doesn't _have _to be," Rachel says, "It's just nice if it is." She frowns. "Don't you like red things?" she asks.

She's being a little disingenuous. She knows Quinn probably has nothing against red – you can't live in a Cheerios uniform and not be okay with red – or maybe she _does _hate red and that's _why – _or maybe she just thinks it's weird to style your food – and it is – it is weird - but Rachel feels light and free and out of jail and like it's quite alright to be as weird as she can.

Quinn's asking if the soy milk is okay and Rachel says it is, "but I don't understand why you eat – or _don't _eat –breakfast here, considering you have a fully functional kitchen in your dorm."

She confesses before Quinn's brow can furrow: "I showed myself around last night when you abandoned me."

_When you abandoned me. Not a leg to stand on._

Rachel is tempted to laugh out loud – maybe the only reason she doesn't is that a second later she's thinking of that time Quinn almost died again.

That Quinn – the same Quinn whose car was totaled, whose body was nearly totaled too, who was lying motionless doing nothing but breathing on her own and that only just… that girl is smiling now, into her coffee, and she's saying she's sorry three times over between sips, and Rachel says "Don't – it's okay – you don't have to."

She's remembering the hospital. The walls were cold on her hands and she couldn't stop shaking. She couldn't stop thinking that if Quinn didn't make it – if Quinn _died _and was _gone _from the world – her life wouldn't be the way it should, ever.

She speaks before the lump in her throat has time to grow, says "I got so into baking toward the end of senior year."

She expects Quinn to get it. She expects the two of them to exchange knowing looks.

They don't.

Rachel pushes a little further. "Cupcakes." She pauses, and adds "Specifically," then "with lemon frosting."

Nothing.

Quinn just nods, and says you have to take a health and safety class to use the oven, though, because last year a girl nearly blew the campus up. She grins and shakes her head, says "When I heard that story I thought: So this is _Yale._"

Rachel's barely listening. She spoons Rice Krispies into her mouth at high speed and soon runs out. It really, really bothers her that Quinn won't acknowledge the cupcakes. It really bothers her that she has never said thank you or that they tasted good or that she couldn't eat them unfortunately but any and all visiting relatives enjoyed them very much.

The cupcakes were for Quinn and they were why Rachel got so into baking toward the end of senior year. Quinn was in a coma for five and a half days and there was nothing Rachel could do – literally, everything was useless to her – or rather she was useless to everything. She couldn't study or sing. She certainly couldn't sleep. And so at night, after her dads had told her it was not her fault for the fifteenth time daily and gone to bed, she put her apron on and got to work. Once she woke up on the kitchen table at four in the morning with flour all over her face. Her skin felt ashy. She remembers being seized by panic.

Rachel took cupcakes in to the hospital so Quinn would have to wake up to eat them.

And she _did. _Wake up, that is. She's never said a word about the cupcakes.

Rachel's not sure what she feels about it except bothered.

She drinks her coffee as quickly as she ate her cereal.

* * *

When Quinn says, "We could go for a walk," it starts to rain. She's in the middle of a forlorn sentence about a lake when lightning strikes, and then it's not so much raining as it is pouring. Zero to deluge before Rachel can even say that sounds like fun.

Instead, she nods toward the window, says "The heavens want us to stay in your room indefinitely."

"Right," Quinn says. She bites her lip and looks around, says "I do have an umbrella, but I'm not sure how it will go with gale force winds."

Rachel nods, and says "No," and then "You know for the first eight years of my life I thought umbrellas were primarily for use as flying aids." She smiles tentatively, then forges ahead with her story. "My dads are raincoat people by nature," she says, "but I nagged and nagged for an umbrella, because for a long time I mistakenly thought people made fun of me because of my raincoat. And anyway, then finally on my eighth birthday they got me a gigantic black one, because I had specified that it had to be a black one for grown ups because I remember I _really _liked the little pink plastic Barbie ones, but I was worried they wouldn't work, of course, and so I got my black umbrella and I jumped off a fence and broke my ankle.

Rachel pauses. She tells herself that it's not for effect but it is. She grimaces for effect to, and says quickly, "Worst birthday ever, let's stay in, I don't want to get my feet wet."

Quinn seems taken aback – maybe – Rachel finds it hard to tell. She has always found it hard to tell what Quinn is thinking at any given moment.

She only knows her broadly. She only knows the big things for sure. For example: Quinn is essentially good. Quinn may someday be the President of the United States of America. The type of president who will make tough decisions and stick to her guns. People will still hate her though, because she's beautiful (and also because she makes tough decisions and sticks to guns). Quinn is smart and wants to be smarter. Quinn likes blazers. Quinn is her friend.

That's what Rachel knows for sure. The rest is a wide, cool, blonde blank. Most of the time she fills it in on her own, but she has a feeling she's never getting it quite right.

This is one of those times – of course it is – it's always one of those times if it's 'never'.

_Of course._

Rachel has no idea what Quinn wants her to say or not say. It's raining. She's just told a stupid story. They can't walk and Quinn won't speak.

So Rachel does. She says, very courteously, "Excuse me one moment, Quinn," and sweeps out of the room.

She's walking down the corridor feeling giddy. She can't believe she's going to do this. She can't believe it, _but she is._

A couple of girls come out of a room laughing and she's startled, takes a wrong turn, and when she turns back she makes it a turn and a half so that if anyone is watching it looks like maybe she was just in the middle of a very purposeful dance routine.

She laughs. She feels like clicking her heels. She feels like singing in the rain inside where it's warm.

She's been down every possible corridor and up again when she remembers the common room is down a level. She takes the stairs like a quick heartbeat through a stethoscope – _one two! One two! – _and says "Good morning," like she knows people when she walks in.

She strides over to the bookshelves and pulls out the Monopoly set. A cigarette lighter and a pack of condoms fall out onto the floor with it and she promptly leaves the room, clutching her prize. She pauses at the stairs. The set has a layer of dust on it so thick it could power a thousand stage sneezes. She takes it into the kitchen next door to the common room that has condoms on the floor and wipes it down with a dish cloth. Quinn's room is exceptionally clean. And what if she has asthma or something?

Rachel frowns and keeps polishing beyond what anyone could deem necessary. _Is it possible that Quinn actually has asthma?_ she wonders. She's straining, trying to remember if she's ever seen her use one of those puffer sprays. _No, _she thinks, rinsing the cloth out under the faucet. _There's no way she would have smoked if she had asthma. _Then she's thinking that she supposes people smoke all the time even though it kills you, so that one's sort of moot. She frowns. Quinn never seemed out of breath when she was dancing. She never seemed tired. Or sad.

She hurries back to the room and when she gets there she knocks on the door. When Quinn answers she grabs the handle and pulls the door back so it stays mostly closed and asks, "Do you have asthma?"

"Um… no," Quinn says. Now she looks really bewildered.

Rachel grins. Bewildered Quinn is fast becoming a favorite. "I have entertainment for us," she says, "but I'm not sure how you're going to feel about it. It's a little crazy, you know." She thinks she might be raising an eyebrow. She makes a mental note to check later whether it looks as good as it feels.

"Oh," Quinn says, haltingly. "Okay."

Rachel pushes the door open and Quinn steps back.

"I have a board game behind my back," Rachel whispers, still holding the box out of sight, like the fact that it's one of the most commonplace board games in history is the best part of the surprise.

She thinks it is.

Quinn raises an eyebrow. (Rachel's obviously not sure what it feels like but it definitely looks good.) "No tigers?" she asks, "Dancing bears?"

Rachel puts on her best crestfallen look. "You have to order those weeks in advance," she says. "And board games are just so much more cost-effective, I find."

Quinn purses her lips, considers. "Okay," she says finally, "As long as it's not scrabble – that always ends in tears."

Rachel pulls the set out from behind her back with one hand, makes a flourishing gesture with the other. "Ta-da," she says, and in a small voice that she definitely intends to be cute, "Monopoly."

"Ah," Quinn says archly, "Monopoly. Otherwise known as the game that lets everyone feel like a real estate agent. I should warn you, I'm good at this."

"Right!" Rachel says, "I remember real estate was your dream before Yale."

Quinn shoots her a strange, mildly irritated look. "Real estate was never my dream," she says, "It's just something I thought I'd be good at."

Rachel's brow furrows. She might be blushing. She's never really thought of being good at things that aren't your dream. It stands to reason though. The toilets at NYADA are impeccably upkept, and she doubts anybody ever says they want to be a janitor when they grow up.

She wants to ask Quinn what her dream is, but she thinks that's probably not the kind of question you ask when you're about to start a game of Monopoly at half past nine in the morning.

Quinn takes the set from her, nods toward the floor and says "We'll need to move your bed," then "Or we can just play on it."

She looks at Rachel like she's waiting for permission. Rachel doesn't say anything. She just sits down and watches as Quinn follows. She puts the set down between them and Rachel lifts the lid.

It's a mess in there. They set about fixing it.

Rachel's sorting the hotels from the houses and making sure they're all the right way up, because when they're jumbled they just seem a little too apocalyptic. She shudders while she works.

Quinn's taking care of the money, and saying "I think it's actually a lot more complicated than this though – real estate. Monopoly just sends you out into the world with an allowance, and your only job is to buy like a boss and build hotels and charge rent to people, and if you wind up in jail it's just because you rolled the wrong number. In the real world…" Quinn pauses. She's counting the dollar bills. When she resumes she says, "There's a girl from one of my classes. I think her name is Karen, but it might be Carrie. It doesn't matter. Anyway the other week I overheard her talking about her dad, who's in real estate. She was so proud." Quinn smiles thoughtfully, pauses again. She's on the twenties, now. "She said he sells the future."

"The future is a house?" Rachel asks. She's confused. That's about the least interesting thing the future could be.

Quinn shrugs, and Rachel says, "My goal is to never live in an actual house again." It's a new goal. She's just now setting it. She gazes into an imaginary distance. "When I move out of my dorm at NYADA, I'll move directly into a gloriously shabby apartment no more than six streets back from Times Square, and then eventually, I'll be in a penthouse on the upper east side and I'll have columns and extremely large potted plants and a driver and probably some kind of drug problem, and then I'll crash and burn and wind up living in a log cabin in the woods, growing my toe-nails and trying to have conversations with small woodland creatures who just aren't interested."

She breathes in. That was quite a spiral, but she doesn't care. Quinn's chuckling.

And she says, "You won't have a drug problem and you won't crash and burn." She looks up. She's holding out the little silver game pieces out in her palm. "But I would never begrudge you a cabin in the woods."

"Good to know," Rachel says. She picks the dog without hesitation.

Quinn picks the car.

Rachel's eyes widen and Quinn catches it. "What?" she sighs. "Rachel, the first pay-check I get out in the real world I'm going to start saving for a Lexus. I feel it's only fair to tell you this now."

Rachel taps the dog restlessly against her knee. "Can't you just use the battleship?" she asks forlornly.

Quinn snorts. "You think I'd be safer at the wheel of a battleship?"

"I think ships have helms," Rachel says.

"_See?_"

Quinn's laughing and shaking her head and dropping the car back into the pile. She selects the iron. "Better?" she asks. She leans in. "I promise not to go too fast."

Rachel nods at the joke, smiles even though it's clearly at her expense, pulls the hem of her skirt tight over her knees. It's a little rumpled. It's always hell to get some time with the iron at NYADA. There's actually an informal roster system going on in her dorm that she didn't know about until the day before she left. Plus, on top of that, Rachel doesn't really know how to iron all that well. Her dads weren't the best with a sewing machine but they were both _sticklers _for a freshly ironed shirt and creases down the front of their good trousers. Ironing was one of those things that was always just sort of done for her back home.

She's not ashamed to admit she misses being babied that way. Well, she's not ashamed to admit it to _herself._

"Once, I was trying to iron and burned a hole in a dress my dads didn't want me to wear," she says, impulsively. She tempers it, "I was eight."

(She was fifteen.)

"Was it nice?" Quinn asks.

Rachel frowns. "No, it really smelled and it was right over the crotch."

Quinn smiles. "The _dress._"

"Oh," Rachel says, "No, my dad was right. It really did make me look like a hooker with low self-esteem."

Quinn eyebrows shoot up. "You were _how old?_"

"Oh," Rachel exclaims. She waves her hands around like that's an answer.

Thankfully, Quinn seems to take it as one. She puts her iron on 'Go' and says, "I always used to pick the canon, but it's missing."

"_Canon,_" Rachel echoes, "Now that would be dangerous."

Quinn stretches out so she's lying by the blankets, and Rachel thinks it's a little odd that the Monopoly board gets the bed. She crosses her legs on the other side.

Quinn has the dice. She says, "Why the dog," then without waiting for an answer, "Do you even know how to play? I'm pretty sure you couldn't be this excited if you knew how to play."

Rachel smiles. "The dog's alive!" she says.

Quinn coughs and laughs. Rachel's not sure which comes first. She says, "It's made out of metal and is smaller than my thumb."

"Yes, yes," Rachel scoffs. "But it _would _be alive if it was real."

Quinn shakes her head. "What's its name?" she asks, grinning broadly.

"Rufus," Rachel says quickly, off the top of her head. She thinks for a moment and then nods. She's pleased with her choice. She says, "And I do know how to play, I think, but I've never really played before. That's actually why I wanted to…" She trails off, and decides to start again at the beginning. "I was an only child," she begins.

Quinn says "I know," before she can get the rest of the sentence out.

"Right," Rachel says. Then "Really?" Then "Okay. So I was an only child and my dads – believe me, they were – are – _extremely _attentive and nurturing parents – I promise - but they weren't into being a part of the herd, you know? And Games Night was for the herd. And I guess," (she hurries so she won't stumble) "I never had a whole lot of friends growing up so I never really got to play, and I always felt a little cheated because every kid needs games night, right?"

She holds her breath for a second when she gets to the end.

Quinn says "Not really," and Rachel's not really sure what she means.

"Anyway," she says hurriedly. "I guess when you don't have something you want it _so much _– or I do – I mean obviously good things. Not cancer. I'll never want cancer no matter how much I don't have it."

"Or asthma," Quinn says. She's smiling again, and it occurs to Rachel that for her to be smiling again she must have stopped at some point.

"Or asthma," she echoes belatedly, just as Quinn says "You know this game might not have been the best choice."

Rachel interrupts. "Oh no, but it _has _to be Monopoly." She doesn't bother to explain why. That would involve telling Quinn she stole things at birthday parties when she was small.

Quinn hesitates, then says, "It's just that Monopoly's never that good with only two people."

Rachel looks down. "Oh," she sighs.

When she looks up again she thinks Quinn seems uncomfortable. She's dropped the iron and started fiddling with her shirt-sleeve. Rachel's about to say they can play something else if she really wants to – or they don't have to play anything at all. Before she can decide which to lead with Quinn says, "I mean, I could call my friend Joe if you like, I'm sure he'd - "

Rachel can't help blurting out her objection. She can't. "No!" is out long before she considers letting it out.

It's not that she didn't like Joe. She honestly did. It's pretty hard not to like somebody when they're cataloguing your talents and abilities – especially when they're cataloguing them in a stoical and non-threatening kind of way. But she can't bear the idea of someone – anyone – coming into Quinn's room right now. She thinks maybe she feels as though she has only just gotten everything right – as though everything was upside down and now it is finally all right side up, and she can't risk changing a thing in case the two of them get topsy turvy again.

Quinn is smiling and nodding in a roundabout way that almost looks like she's doing the opposite. She says slowly, "We can just play together," then quickly, "I'll win anyway."

"No you won't!" Rachel says, a little too fiercely.

She sets Rufus down next to Quinn's iron and smiles as politely as she can. Obviously she doesn't care who wins at Monopoly – _obviously. _She bites her lip and wonders if she ever played well with others – like maybe before she could talk. Was she just like everybody else then?

Quinn's laughing. She asks if Rachel needs to read the rules and Rachel says, valiantly, "No!"

And so they play – quickly. Quinn doesn't take long to make decisions about what she'll buy and what she won't. She's like a well-oiled machine, Rachel thinks, darting from square to square and counting her cash as she goes.

Rachel ums and ahs like she's trying to solve the debt crisis, and never actually buys anything. It's not that she's choosy, it's just that she never lands on the right things.

For instance, if she ever got to New York Avenue, she'd purchase it immediately, but all she ever seems to get is Baltic Avenue, Jail, _Go _to Jail, or Pennsylvania railroad – who wants to go to Pennsylvania, she thinks. And then, pretty soon, all she's landing on is Quinn street.

She's bought up half the board before Rachel decides she'll buy the next thing she lands on no matter what it is. The next thing she lands on is 'luxury tax'. You can't buy that.

She groans and forks out $75 precious dollars to the darned government.

She's parked at the Waterworks when Quinn lands on Community Chest, and she can't help grumbling "I bet you won first prize in a beauty contest."

Quinn laughs. She did.

Rachel flops down on her back and says, "This is stupid. I don't want to play anymore." It's meant to be a joke – _obviously _– and Quinn is laughing when she says she has to go to the bathroom – but when she comes back they do stop playing, more or less, or they slow to the kind of crawl that would have them playing for the rest of the weekend.

It's all on Quinn. She's a lot more talkative than she has been since Rachel showed up in New Haven – a lot more talkative, in fact, than she has ever been as long as Rachel has known her. And she keeps swapping the dice between her hands like she's meaning to roll but forgetting.

Rachel knows what she's doing, of course. She's stalling so that she won't have to win. It's a little pointless since it's already painfully clear that she will win – or would if they ever finished – but Rachel lets her save her the humiliation, just because it's so sweet that she wants to.

Rachel studies Quinn while she reminisces lazily about their hairography period in Glee, and thinks she seems happy. She certainly seems much happier, anyway, since this morning – since she confessed about hiding in the library all night.

She's smiling so much that it's noticeable if she doesn't, and she's laughing at every second thing Rachel says, whether she really ought to or not.

It's like they're dancing, Rachel thinks.

That's the only other time she's been like this with Quinn – in Glee when they were dancing. She always thought it was strange how Quinn would be happy then - and close – how she would be unlocked and opened – spinning around and smiling her way, like they were friends, long before they kind of were – like they were the kind of friends who danced around in each other's bedrooms when no one else was there.

That's how Quinn is now – unlocked and opened, dancing in her bedroom and no one else is there.

Rachel thinks it's a good time to start asking questions.


	7. Chapter 7

Rachel found herself feeling somewhat miffed earlier, when she realized that she didn't know whether Quinn had asthma, _and _that she'd misunderstood her relationship with real estate. It got her thinking that she really doesn't know a whole lot of facts about Quinn. Or at least not a whole lot of facts that you know and tell, just for the sake of knowing and telling them.

_Quinn _on the other hand seems to know things about Rachel that she can't ever remember sharing with her - that she doesn't know why or when she would have. Not just the fact that Rachel's an only child – there are plenty of ways that might have come to her attention. Things like how she took Thursday night ballet classes at Jeanne's for six months even though she hated them, and then she just started teaching herself after school; how in her Freshman year she braided her hair and snipped it off during math class and tried for fifteen minutes to convince her teacher he should leave the braid on the floor and maybe put little pickets around it because she was an installation artist; how she loves Oreo cookies but doesn't eat them anymore because at first she assumed they had cream in the filling but then she read that they didn't, and decided that was cheating and so she wouldn't eat them anyway.

(Quinn thinks that's ridiculous. Food has no moral responsibility, she says. Rachel says _on the contrary,_ the moral responsibility of people who produce food is _exactly _what being a vegan is about. They debate for the next thirty minutes and Rufus and the iron don't move an inch.)

These are things Quinn knows about Rachel. Down to the detail. Somehow.

_Maybe she has a photographic memory, _Rachel thinks jealously, and then she reminds herself that none of those things are photographs.

She props herself up on her elbows with such violence that her hair falls in her face. She shakes it away. "What's your favorite color?" she asks breathlessly.

Quinn squints. "Um… I like all the colors," she says.

Rachel sighs. "Yes, but do you _love _any of them?"

"Maybe I love them all?"

Rachel tries not to huff in an audible or visible way. "You wear a lot of white," she says helpfully, and all she gets back is "Your favorite color is pink," and a smile that probably isn't intended to be smug.

"I _do _like pink," she admits. She can't deny it. She sits up fully and crosses her legs, fires. "What did you want to be when you were a kid?"

Quinn shrugs. "I don't know," she says. "Superman, maybe."

Rachel rolls her eyes without quite meaning to. "I mean in the real world," she clarifies.

Quinn thinks for a long time in the way where her brow knits and her lip twitches. Eventually she says, "I wanted to be a ballerina or a farmer."

"A _farmer?_" Rachel asks, incredulously.

"Sure," Quinn says, with a distant smile. "I was quite enamored of overalls."

Rachel stares at her for a solid ten seconds and then says, "I cannot imagine you in overalls."

Quinn laughs and says, "Neither can I," and there's a sadness to it that Rachel can't break into, a long, silent explanation of who Quinn is, was, and will be, that she can't begin to understand.

Of _course _she can't understand it. Quinn's not actually saying anything, and faces only go so far. They're like poems, Rachel thinks - faces. They tell you so many things you can't make sense of. She resists the urge to ask Quinn what she's thinking right now, instead asks whether she prefers tea or coffee.

"Coffee," Quinn says, and Rachel thinks she knew the answer to that one already, and even if she didn't, that's the kind of question you could ask anytime - like, say, when you're a flight attendant?

She sighs.

"Alright," she says. She closes her eyes and holds a finger up in the air as if to say _Wait for it._ She opens her eyes and drops her arm. "Who is your role model? Who do you look up to? Who _inspires _Quinn Fabray?"

_Bam._

Quinn falters. She says 'um' at least six times, and Rachel thinks she must have struck gold. This has to be something she's never told anybody or she'd know what to say. She leans forward in anticipation of the reply, ready to absorb every juicy detail.

She can't help feeling a little disappointed when Quinn finally says, with something like a shrug, "My Great-Grandmother, I guess, on my mom's side. She's pretty fierce. 91 and still living on her own and cooking all her own meals. That's kind of amazing?"

The last part is a question, as though she hopes the answer is satisfactory. It's not. "You're not going to be a senior citizen for a long time, Quinn," Rachel reproves.

Quinn says "That's all I've got. That and Ghandi." And then she sits up and leans back against her bed. "You wanted to be a big Broadway star and your role model is Barbra Streisand."

Rachel narrows her eyes and sits up on her knees. "_Actually,_" she says, "I'll have you know I wanted to be an astro-physicist up until the age of 10."

Quinn blinks. "Really?" she asks.

Rachel crumples back to the floor. "Nooo," she wails. "Broadway and Barbra, always."

Quinn crumples too – with laughter – and she says, between one gulp of air and another. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. You know how I feel about your dreams."

"Yes," Rachel says miserably. "But how do you feel about _your _dreams and _what are they please_?"

This is the problem. If anybody ever asked her what Quinn Fabray wanted out of life, Rachel would promptly say, "Yale," and Quinn already _has _that.

"I don't know, Rachel," Quinn says, sobering. "I want…"

She hesitates, and suddenly she's drawing her knees up to her chest and looking at the carpet.

"I want a lot of things and I guess I just have to work out…" She takes her iron off New York Avenue. She hasn't bought it yet. Rachel thinks maybe she won't. She thinks maybe she won't buy it even though she's rolling in cash and Rachel only has eleven dollars left under her side of the board anyway.

Quinn looks up, finally. She looks Rachel in the eye. She says, "I guess I just have to work out which of those things I might be able to get and go from there."

"Okay," Rachel says softly. She's not sure why but she feels like she should be very quiet. For a little while. At least until Quinn says, "Anyway," and puts her iron down on Tennessee.

Rachel smiles to herself. _Sweet, _she thinks. And then she's annoyed because she didn't even tell Quinn she was holding out for that card.

Quinn just _knew._

"Chocolate or vanilla?" she asks, in a much more intense way than anyone has ever asked that question, she is sure.

"Chocolate," Quinn says, without hesitation, and Rachel frowns. She was sure she was going to say vanilla on account of how white is her favorite color, and then she realizes that they never _did _establish what Quinn's favorite color is.

_And white's not even a color, _she thinks crossly, and she asks Quinn whether she's ever collected anything, and Quinn says "Stamps," and Rachel knows that she's teasing her.

"What's your favorite movie?"

"Teen Break 6."

Rachel throws Virginia Avenue at her. "That's not even an actual movie," she says, then "Is it?"

Quinn shrugs. "If it's not someone should make it. I'd give it 5 stars."

Rachel throws Rufus at her. He lands in her lap. "I'm going to give you one last chance," she says. She closes her eyes and searches for a good question – one Quinn might actually answer.

"What city do you most want to visit?"

She opens her eyes when she's done asking, and sees Quinn smiling.

"New York," she says.

Rachel is caught mid-yawn. She's confused and just now remembering that she probably only slept about four hours last night. "You've already been to New York, though," she says.

"Yeah, for less than 48 hours. Most of which was spent stressing about Nationals, or crying in a hotel room." Quinn rolls her eyes. "I mean I didn't even get to eat a bagel, I was so worried I wouldn't fit into my dress."

"What?" Rachel squeals, and "You were crying?" and "I ate two bagels a day."

Quinn waves a hand. "Water under the bridge," she says.

In ten seconds' time, when Quinn is asking her if she's ever been to Paris, Rachel will be surprised at how quickly her mind wandered from the water under Quinn's bridge, to the water under her own bridge, and at how quickly the two ran together.

Last time she was in New York – before NYADA – she was losing Nationals and winning Finn. She was being _wooed _and it was _wonderful. _There were bubbles and flowers and Patti Lupones and serenades in the street…

Was that why Quinn was crying in the hotel room?

Rachel says, "It's been on my list since I knew how to make lists," and Quinn tells her she's been three times and it's still on her list too – she thinks it always will be - and Rachel's still wondering if it's possible that Quinn was crying in a hotel room in New York because Rachel had bubbles and Finn.

She's never really entertained the notion that Quinn might actually have gotten hurt by what happened. Perhaps because she gets this vibe from Quinn sometimes that despite her protestations to the contrary whenever she told her not to marry him, she really doesn't _like _Finn anymore. Sometimes she gets this vibe that she never really did.

Still, looking back, she's startled by just how close Ms Sylvester's sister's funeral and Nationals were. She thinks it might have been a week. A week between Finn kissing Quinn and Finn kissing her.

Rachel tells herself she doesn't have to feel guilty about any of it. Quinn cheated on Finn, and then she cheated with Finn. She has no right to the moral highground where he is concerned.

A little voice in her head whispers, _You cheated with Finn, and then you cheated on Finn. _

She's disturbed by the symmetry. She's troubled by the fact that if Quinn doesn't have the highground… neither does she.

Quinn's telling her about a church in the South of France that has rabbits living in it, or _had _rabbits living in it when she was eight, and Rachel thinks that sounds nice. She's trying to concentrate, because she thinks this might be one of those stories she'd like to know and tell about Quinn someday, but her eyes feel so prickly and her stomach feels a lot closer to her spine than it should.

Really, she feels like she's going to crumble into spiny dust if she doesn't get some food soon. She glances up at the clock. It's half past two. Quinn's regaling her with tales of rabbits and pubbits – _pulpits _- and Rachel suppresses the urge to yawn or clutch her stomach like it's a poor abandoned stray with nobody to love it.

She thinks if this was the sort of world where absurdly beautiful porcelain-skinned, bright-eyed vampires who know what's best and don't need to sleep or eat existed, Quinn would definitely be one of them.

She's moved onto Stockholm. Rachel shivers. She feels weak.

The question is whether she gets seasick. Rachel isn't sure. She says, "I'm not sure," and then, immediately after, in a plaintive tone, "Quinn, do you eat lunch?"

Quinn looks at her clock. She frowns and tells Rachel she thinks it's wrong. Rachel says no, her stomach can confirm that it is right via gnawing pain.

"I'm sorry," Quinn says, and "Time flies, I guess."

She's getting her jacket and her umbrella, and Rachel's still lying down on the floor. She listens to the world outside and notes that it's stopped raining. She wonders when that happened.

She lifts an arm. "Help," she says, and then Quinn's standing above her and reaching down.

She takes her hand. She says, "You can stay here if you like. I'll bring the food to you."

Rachel's mind churns. Or it tries to churn and can't quite get all the way around. It's been a long week and it was a long night and that was a long game of Monopoly that they never finished.

She doesn't want to stay here. She wants to grip Quinn's hand and haul herself up and go to get lunch and hear all about Stockholm and boats.

She wants to go boating.

She wants to know whether she gets sea-sick.

She blinks. She says, in a small, guilty voice, "Would you? I just need to rest my eyes for a second."

Quinn smiles. She says, "I would." She says, "I'm going to let go of your hand now Rachel. Don't hit yourself with it."

Rachel chuckles. Her hand falls down on the carpet with a mild thump.

The door clicks closed.

* * *

Quinn comes back with vegetarian sushi, teriyaki tofu with steamed rice, a pumpkin and spinach muffin she has been promised contains no egg or butter, and a small serve of fries – she didn't know what Rachel would want so she thought she'd just get everything she _might_ want - it's okay, she thinks, she can just pretend she's really hungry too.

Maybe she is really hungry. She feels a little light-headed and her throat is dry. She should have gotten them sodas. She hurries back down the stairs to the vending machine in the lobby.

She's been running around campus – sometimes literally – for the better part of an hour. She hopes Rachel hasn't passed out waiting for her.

She yanks the sodas out of the bottom of the machine and makes a mental note to open them out the window even though it's raining again. One of them is dented and they're a little shaken. She shoves them into the lunch bag and tries to take the stairs two at a time, nearly topples over when she bangs her shin against one.

That has _never _happened before.

She sits down and presses her hand against it, mouthing _Ow, _telling herself she's just lucky she didn't drop the bag of all the animal-free lunch in the world. When she gets up her shin is still aching like a clanging sound. She hobbles the rest of the way. It's past three when she gets to her room.

It's past three and Rachel is asleep. She's slumped over the Monopoly board.

_Really? _Quinn thinks, because it looks as though she may have actually passed out waiting for her.

Quinn clutches the lunch bag tightly in a moment of absurd panic, and rushes to kneel by Rachel's body. By the time she's arrived at her side she can see clearly that she's breathing just fine, and snoring mildly into the money. It's fluttering. She has a dollar bill sticking out of her sleeve. Quinn shakes her head and leans back against her bedframe.

She sighs.

She doesn't know how to feel. Irritated, sure, because she has all the animal-free lunch in the world, and the only thing she feels like eating herself are the fries and they'll be cold and soggy by now. And then on the other hand, there's the fact that Rachel managed to fall asleep sprawled on top of the Monopoly board like she tried to hug it, with a dollar bill up her sleeve and what Quinn suspects might be the card for New York Avenue clasped tightly in her fist.

Quinn thinks, _She's even silly when she's sleeping, _and smiles.

She's sitting on the ground and holding the plastic bag up. She's worried she might have spilled something in her haste– and maybe there's a minute hole in the bag – she doesn't want grease or teriyaki sauce leaking onto the carpet. She grabs the Monopoly box and puts the bag down on that, reaches in and pulls out the sushi.

She can see carrot, cucumber, and something squishy that is either avocado or wasabi. She thinks it will probably taste of nothing, but she needs to eat or she might end up passing out on top of Rachel.

And there's the little matter of the dinner reservation.

Quinn didn't mention that to Rachel this morning because she didn't want to make a big deal out of it. And it would definitely seem like a big deal if she had to tell her she'd hung up on the first place she tried mid-sentence when she heard Rachel coming back from the shower – if she had to tell her she took her phone with her to the bathroom and googled for twenty minutes, and texted her mom, and made at least three calls hovering in a stairwell with wet hair.

She should have just booked in front of her. She should have just said "Hey Rachel, wanna go into New Haven tonight? There's this place on Fountain street that supposedly does amazing pasta. Hold on, let me just google and see if they have decent vegan options."

_That _wouldn't have seemed like a big deal. That would have seemed completely normal and above board and breezy.

Quinn thinks she's probably chosen the noisiest eating option possible. When she slides the rubber band off the plastic tray it crackles loudly. Rachel says, "What?!" and then makes a kind of a _zzz_ sound.

Quinn grins and takes a bite of sushi. It would be better with soy sauce, but she's not going to risk it. Those little foil packets have a habit of rebelling on her.

It's only once she's started eating that she realizes how hungry she really is. She wolfs down five pieces before getting up and taking one of the sodas over to the window. Behind her she hears Rachel say "Why?" in a small voice, and she presses her forehead against the window and laughs as quietly as possible.

It's pouring again. She pushes the window up and the sound of it rushes in.

Quinn looks back at Rachel. Her palm is open now and the New York Avenue card is over by the door. Not bad for someone who couldn't throw a football to save herself. Quinn's laughing again, silently. She's remembering Rachel barreling down the pitch at McKinley in a helmet she looked like she shouldn't be able to stand up under. She presses her lips together and turns back to the window, leans out under the raindrops, cracks her soda open. She takes a few uneasy sips.

She wishes Rachel were happier. With New York. With NYADA. With life all alone.

Quinn turns around and sets the soda down on her nightstand. She walks back to the bed – to the board – to the girl slumped over it. She thinks she feels responsible for the state she's in. Like maybe she was just projecting her own readiness for change. Like maybe she expected Rachel to be too strong. Like maybe she wanted too much from her.

She crouches down.

She feels like she needs to do something – that is, like she _should _do something. Rachel's hair is obscuring her face. All she can really see is an eyebrow and half a set of eyelashes that are very dark and very long. Quinn smiles. She got up ten minutes early every morning of sophomore year to put on falsies, and spent at least $500 into the bargain, all in a vain attempt to have eyelashes that were very dark and very long.

Rachel looks uncomfortable, though, she reminds herself. She thinks it can't be comfortable to sleep with a Monopoly board. She thinks the iron might be sticking into her because she can't see it. She can't see Rufus either.

She reaches out to move Rachel's hair away from her face, or she thinks that's what she might have been about to do before she swerves, as smooth as a dance move, stands up and steps toward her bed.

She shakes her head. It wouldn't be feasible to drag Rachel up here. She'd wake up on the way and possibly think for a second or two that she was being abducted.

That would definitely ruin Christmas.

Quinn bites her lip. An idea is forming in her mind and she's not sure if it's perfectly rational or the stupidest thing she's ever done. The comforter is on the floor. She's already tugging at her sheets.

It takes her a solid five minutes to get her mattress off the frame – that is, to get it off the frame without making too much noise. She inches it around the other side of Rachel, that's another five, and by the time she's lowering it down, with excruciating slowness, she's broken out in a mild sweat. It's times like these Quinn is glad she picked a dorm with a gym in it. She can bench-press sixty pounds on a good day, and yes, she is proud.

When she gets the mattress down she has to lie on it for a minute to recover. Her right leg is shaking. Rachel's feet are in her face. They are just getting started.

Quinn sits up and observes Rachel's body. This would be a lot easier if she could get the mattress closer to her ass, but unfortunately her legs are in the way. She'll have to lift them. She'll have to lift Rachel's legs, and shuffle the mattress forward with her knees.

"This is ridiculous," she says, out loud, half hoping the sound of it will wake Rachel and the game will be up.

It doesn't.

Quinn sighs. She gets herself around the other side of the mattress, and leans over until she can grab Rachel's ankles. Any second now she's going to seize them. Any second now she's going to seize them _gently. _Quinn counts herself in with whispers.

_Three…. Two… One…_

She hesitates long enough for the countdown to be useless, and then she takes Rachel's ankles in her hands, shoves the mattress forward with her knee, and places said ankles carefully down on it, saying _Shh, _as she does, even though Rachel's not talking.

She thinks she should keep her hands under them for a moment, till she settles again, and Rachel says _Mmhm, _like she agrees.

Her socks feel soft in Quinn's palms. She thinks they might have cashmere in them. Or silk.

She pulls her hands away before she can be sure, and gets to work evening the mattress up. And when she's done, it's time to accomplish the impossible. It's time to roll Rachel over without waking her up.

Quinn's not entirely sure how to even begin to do this. She was a candy-striper for about three weeks on a geriatric ward with Santana, but neither of them exactly paid attention to anything the nurses were doing. Rachel probably weighs about as much as a little old lady, Quinn surmises. If only she and Santana hadn't been so preoccupied with each other's outfits all the time.

She crawls over to Rachel's side. Her instincts are telling her to take hold of her shoulders. So she does. She takes Rachel's shoulders in her hands and gently pushes her over toward the mattress. It's kind of hard not to roll over there with her. Quinn's teetering on the edge of the Monopoly board on her right knee. Her left is in the air. She probably should have thought this through more carefully. She leans forward just a little more, till she's sure Rachel's not going to actually hit the mattress with a bounce if she lets go, and then she's tipping with her – it's inevitable – she winds up braced above her like she's getting ready to do push ups.

Quinn backs up fast. She's on her feet in no time, and Rachel is already curling around onto her side. She's on the mattress, mostly. Quinn thinks she should get a solid A. She crouches down again and pulls a blanket out from the pile beside her, drapes it over her body as lightly as possible.

Rachel says, "Goodnight," and Quinn answers back softly, "The rain's stopped. The sun is shining."

She lingers for a moment, and then packs up the Monopoly set. When she's done, she grabs her laptop and sits down on Rachel's bed. She may as well get started on some of the reading she needs to do for her history class next week. She pulls her Holocaust porn stash out from under the bed and smiles at herself.

Rachel won't mind. She's facing the other way and she's fast asleep. And besides, now that she's thinking about it, she's pretty sure Rachel's long list of clubs at McKinley included the Student Body Holocaust Memorial Association, of which she was President two years in a row. So she might even, you know, _approve._

Quinn shakes her head and pulls a book out. She really doesn't need to be worrying about anybody's approval but Professor Beresford's.

She opens up where she left off yesterday, and gets to work.

* * *

It's twenty past five when she comes up for air. She's three chapters richer on world war two. Rachel hasn't moved.

Quinn closes her laptop and stretches her arms up. She supposes she'd better get herself ready. She made the reservation for seven, in anticipation of awkward stretches of time in which the two of them might have run out of things to do and say. If she'd known Rachel was mostly going to be taking a nap during her stay she might have made it for eight.

She gets up and loads herself up with her toiletries and makeup and a fresh set of underwear. She opens her closet and takes out the white silk dress she rescued yesterday.

She tiptoes out of the room.

* * *

Quinn rubs moisturizer into her legs. She sprays herself with cologne. She blow-dries her hair. She puts on sheer pantyhose. She slips the silk down over her hips. She runs black liquid lines along her eyelids. She glosses. She dabs concealer onto a blemish the naked eye couldn't see.

Her hair's gotten long. She hasn't had it cut since she left Lima, because she doesn't know which stylists she can trust around here. She pins it up into a French roll, and puts on the diamond studs her mother gave her for her eighteenth birthday.

There. Perfect. Or as close as you can get to perfect when you've been effortlessly keeping a tally of everything that's wrong with you since you were eleven years old.

Quinn gazes at herself in the mirror until someone comes into the bathroom. She's pretty sure she knows her. She might be called Mandy. She says "Hi," and leaves it nameless just in case, and Maybe-Mandy drops a pile of clean sweats in the corner and heads for a stall, says "Wow, you look great, are you going to a wedding or something?"

Quinn says, "No," and then, "Thank you," and then "Just going out to dinner… with… with a…"

She trails off.

It's okay. The stall door is closed and the shower is on. In a couple of moments the mirrors will start to fog again, but Quinn doesn't need to look any longer. She's already decided the dress is too much – far too much.

She hurries back to her room.

* * *

Rachel's still sleeping but she's moved. She's turned over and now she's halfway across her bed again – her original bed, that is, the one that isn't really a bed.

Quinn wonders if that's why she's so tired. She wonders if she was uncomfortable last night. She can't be very comfortable now. She has her head on one of Quinn's books, and it's a hardcover.

Quinn opens her closet and pulls out a black pencil skirt and a green blouse. She stands behind the door while she changes, popping her head around at the completion of each movement to make sure Rachel's not waking up on her. She slips on a darker green crossover cardigan, and black pumps, and thinks _I am not going to a wedding or something._

She thinks she feels better. And now there's nothing left to do except figure out a way to get Rachel to wake up.


	8. Chapter 8

**Warning:** This is a long one. And also, Quinn says something that will offend some people (it kind of offends me), but it will be addressed. And she's just, you know, working through some stuff. So. Bear with us? And thanks so much to everyone who's read and reviewed!

* * *

Quinn tries saying Rachel's name, first very softly, then a little louder, then in a regular speaking voice. She says it at least six times and gets no response. Eventually she tries Barbra. Then Rufus. Then, somewhat grudgingly, she tries Finn.

Nothing.

Eventually she decides she should probably just touch her. It's just that she's not sure how effective that will be, since she was able to drag her from one bed to another without waking her.

Quinn sighs. She goes to sit down on her bed and realizes there's only a bare frame. It's metal and spindly, and looks like it would be uncomfortable. She kneels down on Rachel's blankets instead, and before long she's crawling forward.

"Rachel," she says, one last time, when she's leaning over her. It's no good. She'll have to move on to phase two.

She leans in and taps Rachel's shoulder with a finger. Then she taps her temple. Then her cheek. Her nose wrinkles when she does that. Her eyelashes flutter.

Quinn sits back on the blankets and slips her pumps off. She traps her hands under her thighs. She sucks her lips inside her mouth.

Rachel's nose wrinkles again, and she didn't do a thing this time.

Quinn lets her lips go. _"Rachel, wake up!" _she commands. She intends it to be significantly louder than it turns out, and not for the first time since Rachel showed up in New Haven, she finds herself wondering what the hell is wrong with her.

She's never been quite this… the only word she can come up with to describe it is 'feeble'.

Since when is she _feeble_?

She flops down on her stomach and relocates her hands to a new safe place under her cheek. Her blouse will be getting creased. She can feel her hair dislodging already. Maybe she should just forget the reservation and go with the flow. If Rachel wants to spend the evening sleeping then maybe Quinn should just close her eyes and do the same.

She does. Close her eyes, that is. She can't possibly sleep.

And neither can Rachel.

Neither _may _Rachel. Because it may be what she wants to do right now, but it's not what Quinn wants them to have done with their Saturday night when Rachel goes back to New York. She's been an abominable host so far, and this dinner was her big shot at setting things right. It was her big shot at making the weekend worthwhile.

She sits up abruptly and smooths her hair. Then she reaches for her laptop, opens it, opens itunes, pulls her headphones out of the jack, turns the volume up and…

And spends ten precious minutes trying to pick out a song to play.

It's after six when she realizes she's being silly, searches 'beatles' and double clicks at random.

Quinn is already bursting out laughing and covering her face in the short intro before _I'd like be! Under the sea! In an octopus's garden! In the shade!_

She peeks out between her fingers, drops her hands quickly when she sees that Rachel has sat up.

"What?" Rachel says, "Hello?"

Quinn gets her laughter under control, mostly. She says, "Sorry," and shuts her laptop. "My evening song," she adds, by way of explanation.

Rachel's hands fumble over her eyes. "That's okay," she says. Then she turns around and lies down, pulls the blanket back over her body.

"No, no, no!" Quinn squeaks. She sits up on her knees and says loud and clear, "Rachel, you wake up right now or you won't get your surprise!"

She frowns the moment she's said it. _Your surprise. _Now it really will seem like a big deal.

Rachel rolls over with a confused expression on her face. _"Quinn?"_ she asks anxiously.

"Yes," Quinn confirms rapidly, "You're at Yale University in New Haven, in Quinn Fabray's dorm room. You played Monopoly all morning and fell asleep waiting for lunch. It's ten past six. _And you have to wake up now._"

"Oh," Rachel says. She sits up and pulls the blanket off her body. Her skirt has ridden up her thighs and she pulls it down quickly, then picks a couple of strands of her hair out of her mouth. "I'm sorry," she says sleepily. "Did you say something about a surprise?"

Quinn shakes her head, but says yes. She tells Rachel she has maybe fifteen minutes before they need to get going, and Rachel leaps to her feet, saying "I'm good! I'm good aren't I?" and casting worried downward glances at her clothing.

Quinn says she's good, twice, but she stumbles over to the mirror on the desk anyway, and groans. "I need to wash my face," she says, "And brush my teeth, and just…" she turns to Quinn and motions up and down her body from head to toe, back and forth vigorously "… fix this!"

She runs to the bathroom, runs back for her toiletries and make up, and that's when she pauses and actually looks at Quinn steadily for the first time since she woke up.

She blinks a couple of times, rubs her eyes with the back of her hand.

She says forlornly, "You look so nice."

* * *

The restaurant is called 'Harvest',and it's in the center of New Haven, easily accessible by bus. Quinn checked the route and the bus times this morning on her phone in the same toilet stall where she waited for far too long for her mom to text her with the name of the place. Then she texted Joe to see if he'd heard of it, and texted her back asking why? Was she buying? It's a little out of his price range…

Going by the prices on the menu Quinn scanned – also on her phone – also in the damn toilet stall – it's not strictly in Quinn's price range either. She won't be visiting net-a-porter any time soon – and that's fine - that doesn't bother her - it's not like she actually _needed _that Chloe shoulder bag - but she does sort of wish there was some way she could prevent Rachel from looking at the actual prices of things tonight.

It's not that she wants to look cheap! It's just that she doesn't want to look expensive. And she doesn't want Rachel to be worrying about what she orders, and she's not sure if she'll worry more or less if she thinks they're going dutch, versus if she just tells her straight up that she's going to pay.

Quinn has been worrying about this issue since Rachel fled to the bathroom, and has come up with no conclusions. Now they're walking to the bus stop and she's wishing they'd just ordered Dominos.

You can build your own pizza – she looked it up – it was perfect – all cheese could have been avoided – all cheese and all big-deal embarrassment.

Quinn shivers and pulls her jacket tight around her. Rachel's jumping over puddles.

* * *

The wait for the bus is so minimal as to be non-existent – a minute and a half to be precise – and that was only in case it came early. It was timed perfectly, but Rachel doesn't know that. For some reason Quinn wants to let her believe it's luck.

She starts to sit down up the front when they board, but catches Rachel moving towards the back out of the corner of her eye, follows like she was just getting in a hamstring stretch on the way. They don't talk much on the journey - or rather Quinn doesn't talk much. Rachel keeps asking where they're going, repeatedly, in various escalatingly ridiculous turns of phrase, and Quinn keeps primly not answering. It becomes a game quickly – and it is fun – until Quinn realizes the dinner that seemed like too much a few minutes ago is probably hyping its way to being a disappointment.

When Rachel asks "To whence do we repair?" she abruptly answers: "It's a restaurant called 'Harvest,' it's supposed to be really good, and I figured we may as well get one decent meal this weekend."

Rachel turns to her, blinking. "I thought it was supposed to be a surprise!" she says.

Quinn shrugs, smiles, swallows. "Well, you look surprised enough to me right now," she says.

It doesn't take long to get there, which is a good thing, because once Rachel has laughed and nudged her and shook her head and said she's _really_ hungry, actually, and hey what happened to lunch, and Quinn has said "It fell asleep waiting for you," silence falls.

Silence falls, and Quinn is thinking how silence is golden, silence is good, but for some reason it's just not right with Rachel.

_Maybe I'm just used to the sound of her voice, _she thinks. She's not sure what that even means.

As they're crossing the street from the bus stop Rachel says the place looks busy in a worried kind of way, and Quinn comes clean – sort of. "I booked us a table earlier," she says. She doesn't mention the stairwell or the stall or Joe or her mom or google, and she's grateful when Rachel just looks at her with that harmlessly curious expression that children always seem to have on their faces.

_Children._

Quinn frowns. She smooths her pencil skirt down and surreptitiously inspects her shoes for shine, catches sight of Rachel's as she does. Aqua Mary Janes. With little white socks.

Quinn sighs into a smirk. Even if they hadn't been on a schedule – even if it wouldn't have been hideously prone to misinterpretation - there wouldn't have been any point in asking Rachel to dress up. Dress up for her means _dress ups, _and there is no occasion, it's a way of life. Quinn realizes in that moment that she's pretty sure she has never seen Rachel in sweats. She wonders what that would be like.

The reason for the pencil skirt, and the reason for the concern re: Rachel's pre-pubescent footwear, is the same reason Quinn says simply, "Fabray," when the maître d' says good evening, the same reason she turns back to Rachel as they're being shown to their table and says, loudly and casually, "You have no idea how hard it was getting a sitter. I ended up having to pay my usual girl – you know – Elsa's kid - half as much again just to get her to do it." She sits down, smiles briefly at their waitress as she puts her napkin in her lap, leans in to Rachel opposite and says in the kind of whisper that's not for secrets, "Ever since she lost all that weight, she's started valuing her Saturday nights a lot more highly."

Rachel, thankfully, seems to be so confused that she can't even manage to get a confused look on her face until after the waitress has whisked herself away. "I'm sorry?" she says, clutching the cutlery.

Quinn grins, says in a real whisper "When she comes back I'm going to order a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and she's going to give it to me. This place doesn't do teen mom."

Rachel smiles flickeringly, understanding, but still overwhelmed. "Oh," she says, and by that time the waitress is back with menus and Quinn is laughing at something she hasn't said.

"Well she _was _pretty colicky early on, but she's settling down now. She just hates it when I'm away from her – she _cries and cries_ and I always feel_ - _"

She looks up like she's only just noticed the waitress is there, and says, without missing a beat "Oh, thank you," takes the menu, declines the wine list, asks "Can we get a bottle of the Eastbrook Sauvignon Blanc?" and turns back to Rachel before it can become an actual question.

It's masterful. Quinn is very, very pleased with herself when the waitress goes off to do her bidding without a word about ID.

(She has a fake ID. She just didn't feel like using it. She wanted to be smooth. She wanted to make this look easy. She wanted to make it look like no big -

"I checked the wine list online," she confides in another giddy whisper, "It looks like you know what you're doing."

Rachel smiles tentatively. "Wow," she says, like she's still trying to process what took place. "That's… impressive."

Then she frowns, just as tentatively, like maybe she's unprocessing. "You know, I thought for a second that you were talking about Beth." She looks up quickly, then down, then up again. "I mean I thought that – that you and Shelby had – had you know – gotten back in touch."

Quinn knows she's taking a little too long to smile. She's trying, but it's like 'Beth' was some kind of magic word and all of a sudden she can't move. She forces her menu open, slowly, and by the time she's looking down her lips might be curved. She says "No, we're not in touch. But I probably was talking about Beth."

Rachel's trying to change the subject to "how shiny this table cloth is," when Quinn asks, without quite meaning to, "Do you ever see Shelby?"

Rachel shakes her head in a strange blushing way, like someone's just paid her a compliment. The wine arrives. The waitress lights a candle with a match.

The next five minutes are spent looking at menus. Rachel makes a lot of thoughtful little noises and twists her mouth from side to side. Quinn casts quick glances around the restaurant – she didn't really notice anything around her till now – and now she notices that this whole restaurant is full of pairs of men and women – and one family of four – a mother, a father, two very well behaved children – and even they are fitting the theme – a pink dress and a blue shirt. Quinn forces her attention back to the menu, resists the urge to start counting the male and female wait staff to see if she and Rachel are ruining some kind perfect 50/50.

She takes a gulp of her wine, faintly registers that she should have swirled it around the glass and brought it to her nose first. If anyone was watching she'd look like a kid at a lemonade stand on a hot day.

She checks. No one's watching. She keeps sipping. Rachel's still looking at her menu and she's really engrossed now, she's really frowning at it, and Quinn finds herself really smiling when she takes another lemonade-gulp (her teeth knock gently against the glass).

She sets the glass down, notes that it's already empty, notes that Rachel's is entirely full, takes a firm hold of the menu and reads the same line six times.

_Warm swiss chard salad with pumpkin and walnut terrine._

Times six.

It's ridiculous. She's not _drunk. _It was one glass!

She blinks, flips over a page, starts at the top, reads to a stern beat:

_Homemade potato and wilted spinach gnocchi with red pepper relish_

_Homemade soy tagliatelle with a light tomato, basil and scallion sauce_

_Field mushrooms baked with ginger, garlic and sherry, carrot, parsnip and baby beetroot_

_Fish of the day with lentils and a zucchini tian_

_Roasted Spatchcock with potato gratin and rocket salad_

_Porterhouse steak with porcini and black pepper cream, steamed new potatoes and chicory_

_Grain Fed –_

"There's so much _choice._ I'm over_whelmed,_" Rachel blurts out from a million miles away, and Quinn looks up quickly like she's just been caught cheating during a test.

(She has never been caught cheating during a test – she has never cheated – not with schoolwork - she has no idea what that would feel like – she's being ridiculous – she's not _drunk._)

Rachel smiles easily and Quinn smiles back.

"It's always so simple at Breadstix on account of how they only have the one vegan option and it's fries, and even then, one time I had to go out the back to check that they were using the same frier they use for those chicken pieces, and they ejected me before I could make a solid assessment, so I'm always a little iffy. But here? Here there's grilled tofu and homemade pastas with no mention of cheese - and this might be the first time I've used this word in conversation, but I'm _flummoxed_, Quinn_._" She grins over the top of the menu, like _wasn't that fun, _and Quinn would grin back if she wasn't saying "Yeah, I heard that this place was good that way."

_I heard on google, _she should say.

The waitress approaches. She doesn't have a notepad, but looks like she means business – and Quinn has not even begun to make a choice.

_Flummoxed, _she thinks, flips back to the appetizer page.

She doesn't hear what Rachel orders – just the tail end of 'tomato' and the waitress confirming that there would be no dairy. Then she's being looked at expectantly, and not wanting to seem like she's being rushed, she rushes headlong into that warm swiss chard salad and the porterhouse steak – she's really hungry – the nothing-tasting sushi was not enough - she hasn't had an actual steak since she left Lima – just the thought of it is making her mouth water. The waitress asks "How would you like that cooked?" and Quinn's thinking _rare, medium rare, _she's frowning at the menu, she's thinking how there are so many vegan options at this restaurant, and suddenly the steak seems like the most ostentatiously meaty decision she's ever made, so she takes it back quickly – "No – no wait – I'll go with the fish."

It's badly done. She doesn't even ask what the fish is, says "That's fine" too quickly when the waitress tells her anyway.

It's apologetic. It's immature. It's not even remotely smooth. She tells herself it doesn't matter because they have the wine already, reaches for the bottle, tries to remember whether she hates walnuts.

Rachel is pouring herself a glass of water and asks if Quinn wants some. She's holding the pitcher up and her hand is hanging low on her wrist like it's too heavy for her. Quinn thinks this place should have lighter pitchers. She shakes her head and says "Yes," asks whether Rachel wants any more wine even though her glass is still full and the brim unblemished.

(Her gloss is pink, it would show.)

Rachel ums and ahs – literally, out loud, one "um," followed by one "ah". She eyes the glass with trepidation. "I'm not sure if I should," she confesses. "The last time I drank alcohol I'm told I got very…" she glances around the room, "… very kind of embarrassing."

Quinn smiles.

_Very kind of._

"Was that the same time you made out with a gay guy?" she asks, eyebrows raised.

Rachel doesn't appear to need to think back. She grabs her napkin instantly, like she's going to cover her face but doesn't. She laughs, shakes her head, leans in. "He wasn't gay _at the time. _I turned him for about a day and a half, just so you know." She's looking down when she finishes the sentence, almost so her eyes are closed. There's a real flush of pink over her cheeks and her lips are twitching.

Quinn suddenly feels like she's not there. Like she's not really in a restaurant with Rachel waiting for walnuts - like she's inside her own head imagining the restaurant and Rachel and the walnuts. It's a fleeting feeling, and in the bare time it takes for her to think it she's said "You can't turn people."

It comes off a little too serious, she thinks. But Rachel doesn't. She seems to take it as a joke and says "Do you doubt my powers of persuasion?" with a hand on her heart and an open mouth.

Quinn shakes her head, looks jovial. "No, I didn't mean you specifically. I just meant people don't actually change that way."

Rachel waves a hand dismissively. The blush on her cheeks creeps. "Oh no, obviously, you're right – he didn't – I mean he wasn't," she smiles wide and shakes her head, says "Blaine is _very gay._"

"Right," Quinn says. "No closet straight guy could wear that many bow-ties in a year."

"_Right,_" Rachel agrees. "Gay as the ace of spades – or something," she rolls her eyes. "Just so we're clear, I was only ever going to get him to bisexual, anyway."

"Bisexuality isn't real," Quinn says abruptly, aware a second after she does that her glass is empty again and Rachel's is still full. She hastens to soften the remark: "I mean, I don't believe in it."

Rachel looks confused. "Brittany says she's bisexual."

Quinn shrugs. "Brittany also says that coke should be legal because all the kids are drinking it anyway." She frowns. "Sometimes I'm really not sure she should be sexual of any kind." She shakes her head, looks at the empty space in front of her. "I just think you're either one way or the other. And if you think you're not, you're just not trying hard enough."

Rachel considers. "Do you have to try, though? I always thought you were just supposed to make that stuff up as you went along."

"That doesn't seem… prudent," Quinn say slowly. "It doesn't seem reasonable." She looks up, says "You know?" mostly for something to go with the eye contact.

Rachel takes it as a question, cocks her head to one side. "Honestly? Not really. I don't really know. I mean, there was always Finn, for me, so I didn't really need to think about things – "

Quinn concentrates on gripping the stem of her glass with her fingertips. She's back on the empty space and she wants to make faces. Rachel's still talking and she's missed a fragment, comes back in at "it was always simple for me."

"It was simple for me too," she says, so hot on the heels of Rachel's sentence that she kind of stomps on it. She's quick to speak because it's true – she had Finn too, after all – and Puck and Sam and Joe and she could have had as many others as there were date nights in a year. If it was simple for Rachel is was fifty times simpler for her.

She smiles, lets go of her glass, drums her fingers on the table, says "Boys are easy."

There's a little too much silence in response. Quinn looks at Rachel when she notices, and Rachel looks back at her with a foreign expression on her face about which can be concluded with certainty only that it is not happy.

Quinn has no idea what to say. Just as she's beginning to think even "How about them dodgers?" would be better than nothing, Rachel speaks.

"I don't think easy and simple are the same thing," she says, and she's right – she's so right – and Quinn wants to say _You're right. You're so right, _but instead she runs a hand through the too-thick locks of hair that have found their way out of her pins, rolls her eyes, smiles, says "I don't even know why I'm talking about this stuff. It's Joe – you know, my friend Joe? He's taking this class called 'Gender and Sexuality' and it's all he ever talks about."

It's true and it's not. Joe is taking _Gender and Sexuality_, but it's not all he ever talks about. If he were dictating their conversation they would probably be talking about ice hockey.

Whatever – it worked – or maybe it's the two quick mouthfuls of wine Rachel drank while she was saying it. Either way the foreign look is gone and she is smiling broadly and saying how Joe seems nice and are he and Quinn…

Quinn tries to keep her scoffing to a minimum. He _is _her friend after all, and Rachel doesn't mean any harm, even if it's frankly infuriating that she still thinks that way – _Quinn and Joe sitting in a tree – _and she's not sure how much clearer she could have made it: she doesn't believe in sitting in trees and she's not about to start pretending to with some boy, no matter how fond she is of him.

She doesn't say any of that, which she puts down to the fact that she's not drunk, but also to the fact that the appetizer arrives.

The appetizer as in _the _appetizer.

Quinn sits there with her walnut terrine in front of her making very small talk for at least five minutes – the kind you make when you're waiting for something. It's only when Rachel asks if she's dating anybody else then, and she says "I don't have time for dates," and the side of the candle between them collapses in a sudden avalanche and somebody behind her laughs softly and murmurs _I love you…_

It's only then that she asks "Gosh, what did you order? The extremely slow roasted turnip?"

Rachel says "Ohhh," shakes her head quickly, and explains that she didn't order anything, she thought they were just going to have entrées, and then when Quinn ordered she realized she hadn't really looked at the appetizers and the waitress had already taken her menu and it's okay, anyway, the bread is really nice.

She picks appreciatively at the roll on her side plate. Quinn frowns and smiles at the same time – creased brow, curved lip. She looks down at her plate, and nudges it into the middle of the table.

She expects Rachel to object – that's what people do after all – polite people always say no. She remembers her mom -_I couldn't possibly _– always - at least three times – whenever anyone tried to give her anything. She's pleasantly surprised when Rachel doesn't – object, that is. She just picks up her fork and crumbles a lump of pumpkin out of the terrine and hums _Mmm _when it's in her mouth and Quinn feels warm and pleased, like the time she gave Julie-Anne Fong half her twinkie in second grade when all the girls were picking on her and she smiled and wiped her tears away with sticky fingers.

She'd tell Rachel the story now if it wasn't so sentimental. _See, _she'd say, _I wasn't always a mean girl. _

She's just thinking what to tell Rachel instead – or what to ask – when Rachel asks her something.

"So you really haven't heard anything from Shelby?"

Quinn adds to her forkful of chard. _A good excuse to stab something, _she thinks. She says: "No, I really haven't."

Rachel says "Oh," solemnly, and Quinn looks up, puts the chard into her mouth, chews slowly.

When she's done and Rachel still hasn't said anything, she says "You seem disappointed – about Shelby."

Rachel smiles at the plate. "Oh – no," she says, the way people say 'No' when they mean 'There's no point'. She looks up at Quinn briefly, then back down at the plate, shrugs. "I guess I am disappointed," she says carefully, "Just not _about _Shelby." She spears a walnut fragment. "I'm disappointed _in _Shelby."

"How so?" Quinn asks. She reaches for her wine with the wrong hand and nearly takes Rachel's. She might have, if Rachel hadn't been reaching for it too.

She watches as Rachel takes a sip – and then another one – then sets the glass down. "Look," she says, and Quinn is looking, she's sort of peering at her, really, because she's pretty sure she's never seen Rachel this serious before – not even that time she told her Finn proposed.

Quinn fiddles with what's left of the terrine to give Rachel time. She almost wants to change the subject to give her forever.

_So. Chards. Turns out they're pretty much just spinach?_

"I feel really bad about this," Rachel says evenly, "because I should have said it at the time and I didn't. Because I was afraid to, I guess. You were so… well, I just thought I'd best leave sleeping dogs lie."

"You're calling me a dog now?" Quinn asks lightly. She wants to add _You of all people? _but she's not sure Rachel knows how many compliments she's paid her. Maybe she'd be embarrassed. Maybe _Quinn _would be embarrassed.

Maybe Quinn's going to be embarrassed all night anyway.

Rachel smiles an entreating smile. "A _beautiful _dog," she says. "With a shiny coat." She holds a hand up, says reverently "A _lab._"

Quinn is grinning despite herself. She wishes she could think of something cute to say in return. She wishes she could think of anything to -

"You were right to be angry," Rachel says all at once, and all at once solemn again. "What you - " She hesitates. "What you thought about doing was the wrong thing for Beth. And for you. But what Shelby did with _Puck…_?" She doesn't finish the thought. Just shudders like she's exiting a cloud of bugs. "I mean, it was cruel. You _created _Beth with Puck. You _slept _with him."

"You made out with him," Quinn says in a low voice. She shrugs like it may as well be the same thing.

Rachel squirms like the bugs are back and then she shakes her head again. "It's not that big a deal for me though. I mean Puck wasn't the same thing to me as he was to you."

Quinn's brow furrows lazily. This is a bone she has long wanted to pick. "What exactly do you think Puck was to me?" she asks, trying to keep the accusatory edge out of her voice.

She pours them both more wine – this time Rachel holds her glass out for it – and Quinn sits back in her chair for the first time since they arrived at the restaurant.

"Well?" she asks, swirling the golden liquid round in her glass, and Rachel gets another reprieve when the waitress comes to take their plate away.

"Well – obviously…" she starts, and then pauses for so long that what she's about to say can't possibly be obvious – and then it turns out that it is. "He's the father of your child?" She winces, like this is a spelling bee and she's knows she's a letter or two out.

Quinn drinks. "Very astute. But that's not what you said back at McKinley."

Rachel tries for vague. "Isn't it?" she asks, adding quickly "This sauvignon block is really good."

Quinn smiles. "Blanc," she says. "It means white. The C and the N are silent. You said we were meant to be."

Rachel sips her wine. She's nursing the glass like it's a coffee cup, holding it close to her face. "You said Finn and I were meant to be," she counters.

Quinn takes a long time to reply. When she does she says "Isn't that what you wanted me to say?"

Rachel swallows. She looks like she might be going to cry like she did in the café yesterday. Quinn hopes the entrées come soon. She hopes Rachel answers before they do.

She doesn't answer at all. She says softly "Puck wanted you so much."

"So I should want him back?"

"Didn't you?"

"Not really," Quinn says, enunciating each syllable. "And you _really _overestimate how much he wanted me. I would put it somewhere around slightly less than he wanted to sext with a closet lesbian."

Rachel looks genuinely confused. "But I remember the way you used to look at him sometimes…" She blinks at Quinn, drops her gaze suddenly.

There's a long wait. And then Quinn says slowly "Not everything has to mean something. Not everything that means something has to mean everything."

Rachel looks up again. "Doesn't it?" she asks anxiously. Suddenly there are tears on the shiny tablecloth and Rachel's running hasty fingers under her eyes. She says, like she hopes it might be funny, "Sometimes I think I made all my major life decisions when I was twelve."

Quinn holds her breath. She should probably comfort Rachel. Or better – change the subject. But all she can do is sit and wait without breathing.

Rachel takes another few sips of her wine. "Broadway and a boy," she murmurs, "I didn't even know Finn when I was twelve…" She looks up, smiles earnestly. "And then in junior year, there he was, just like magic."

Quinn deflates, suppresses a sound that would have resembled _Ugh, _if it had gotten out. She wants to put her hands flat on the table, lean in and say, 'That's not magic, Rachel. Magic is flying with umbrellas and turning tables into pie. You and Finn are pulling a rabbit out of a hat, at best. _It's just pretending._'

She tries to be kind instead. It's hard to ask "How is Finn?" and look like she cares, but she manages it.

Rachel wouldn't understand if she was bitter. She doesn't know the things Finn said to her on prom night – the way he made her feel. And even if she did… Rachel probably wouldn't understand if she was bitter.

She sighs loudly and heavily exactly when Rachel does the same thing, and they both notice it. Quinn laughs, Rachel says "Jinx! Sort of…"

The mood is lighter, the way it always is when it's been heavy. Rachel's picking at her bread roll again. She says "Finn's good, I think. I mean, we don't talk a whole lot." She looks up and says reluctantly, "We don't actually talk at all. He thinks it's probably better. I probably think he's right."

It almost sounds like a question. Quinn resists the urge to nod.

"I mean, he emailed the other day and I emailed back and then he emailed again. But we try to keep it to a minimum. It just hurts too much."

Quinn looks down, watches as Rachel digs an uncharacteristically large chunk out of her roll. She wants to ask why it hurts. She wants to ask whether they're even actually broken up, or whether they're just being drama queens about long distance. She never really got the full story there. For all she knows they could be getting married in the –

Rachel isn't wearing the ring.

Quinn's eyes follow her left hand in a frozen line as it makes its way to her mouth.

It's completely naked.


	9. Chapter 9

"Yeah…" Quinn says.

In response to what, she's not quite sure.

She's pretty sure Rachel was talking about Finn, but somewhere along the way she's started talking about Kurt, maybe, or it could be that Finn was curt with her about something, Quinn really isn't sure, because she really hasn't been listening.

She keeps pleading with her mind to focus on the sense of Rachel's words, rather than just the sound of them. She keeps ordering her eyes to move from her fingers to her face. And it's quite a battle - like she's suddenly six again at a wedding or a funeral or a birthday party with too many adults at it.

_You have to look people in the eye when you say Hello, Quinnie._

She was afraid then. And she's something like afraid now. Maybe she's going crazy. Maybe the ring's right there and she just can't see it.

Because she just _cannot believe _that thing is gone.

Once, after a particularly frustrating session of _Not another teen wedding_ in the bathroom at McKinley_, _Quinn started a journal just to write in it:

_If Rachel Berry lost all her fingers she would put that ring on a necklace. If she lost her neck she would worry about the ring._

Quinn coughs into her napkin. Rachel's definitely talking about Kurt, because she's sure she heard her say Blaine – or was it _lame?_ She frowns, then smiles hastily, and decides to throw herself at the conversation before she can get lost again. She opts for the first Kurt-related statement that springs to mind, and unfortunately that statement is: "I don't think Kurt likes me."

It's reflective, and without aggression, certainly not intended to distress Rachel. But she seems to take it like a knife to the chest.

"_What?_" she exclaims. "Of _course, _Kurt likes you. What are you _talking _about?"

She's clutching at the collar of her shirt and waiting for an explanation.

Quinn shrugs. "It's no big deal, I just don't think he's - "

"_No big deal?_" Rachel shrieks.

Quinn jumps in her seat, shushes her instinctively, feels bossy.

Rachel rolls her eyes, but the volume is lowered when she speaks again. "You take that back immediately," she says, "or I'm going to text him and tell him you said it." She already has her phone out of her purse. She taps a couple of buttons and her eyes widen. She looks up at Quinn and says, "_Oooh _he should tweet you a haiku."

"He should what?" Quinn asks. She does know what a haiku is, and what a tweet is, but somehow she is still puzzled by this proposal.

"He tweets people haikus," Rachel repeats. She smiles giddily at her phone. "Isn't it _cute?_"

"Yes…" Quinn agrees uncertainly.

Rachel is too busy with her phone to see the expression on her face, and it's probably a good thing. "Okay," she says, with great excitement, "This is the last one he tweeted me – I've had three – Blaine's had seven – I'm a little jealous, I won't deny."

She clears her throat, breathes in, sits up straight, and asks if Quinn's ready, and Quinn nods, lifts her glass to her lips, thinks _All this for seventeen syllables._

"You will tread the boards," Rachel reads, looking down her lashes, and making the kind of face you make at puppies, "But in my heart you are still," She pauses for effect, "And still my soul's mate."

Quinn swallows her wine funny. She coughs. She says "Soulmates, huh?" She wants to say _I never ever want to hear the ones he tweets Blaine. _

Rachel confirms, without a hint of irony, "Yes! And no soulmate of mine could ever hate you."

"Well, I never said _hate,_" Quinn objects. "He just acts like I'm harsh – judgmental – maybe by his standards I am." She quotes herself, "'Suicide is selfish,'" rolls her eyes, whether at herself or at Kurt she's not sure. "He wouldn't like 'Bisexuality isn't real' either".

"Well that would be a little hypocritical," Rachel says, "Since he's said as much himself."

"He… has?" Quinn asks. She's greatly unnerved. She's not sure why it's okay for her to say it, but weird as hell for Kurt to have said it too.

Rachel tilts her head, lifts a hand and turns it from side to side. "To be fair it was fueled by a jealous rage, but I don't think you ever want to be arguing you're better than somebody else because of a jealous rage. I mean unless you're Bette Davis. _Nobody _does a jealous rage like Bette Davis."

Quinn smiles. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. She's seen that.

"Do you think I'm wrong?" she asks. "I mean I know you disagree with me… but do you think I'm wrong to think it? That it's just..." The smile is gone. She swallows. It's strange and empty, like she thought she had something in her throat but didn't. "Do you think I'm wrong to think it's just not trying hard enough?"

Rachel leans forward in stages – one to the left, two to the right, three her elbows are on the table. "I think it might hurt people to say it," she says softly. "Like Brittany."

Quinn's face floods with heat, her eyes prickle. She feels bad – she feels terrible, actually. She would never want Rachel to think she was trying to hurt people. She's not that girl anymore. Sometimes she pretends she never was.

The urge to spill about Julie-Anne and the twinkie is nearly overwhelming.

She bites her lip briefly, taps a nail against the rim of her glass. "I don't want to come off like a bigot. I mean, I do think Brittany loves Santana. It's just that I…" She trails off, searching for the right words – searching, in fact, for the right thing to put into words in the first place - and just as she does the waitress appears with the entrées and she is glad to be able to stop looking and start eating.

Quinn thinks that's why people go out to eat instead of just going out. So they will have something they can do when they don't have something they can say.

The fish is good, the lentils are okay. Rachel is in the crazy kind of raptures over her pasta. She keeps trying to convince Quinn that the mushrooms taste just like parmesan, only better, and Quinn keeps coolly skeptical.

"Nothing against mushrooms," she says, "Although I've gotta say, technically they're fungus, and technically fungus is seriously disgusting, but there's no way they can replace cheese."

"Okay, _now _you're coming off as a bigot," Rachel huffs, "You haven't even tried it!"

Quinn laughs around a mouthful of fish and swallows quickly. "Rachel, how many times?! Food is not the great moral challenge of the 21st century."

"Well sure it's not," Rachel says, spearing a slice of mushroom and cocooning it in tagliatelle, "If you're a big cheese bigot."

Quinn's covering her mouth, laughing, trying to get her lentils down, when Rachel holds her fork out and commands, "Eat it!"

Quinn hesitates. Does Rachel actually want her to eat it off her fork? Is this a whole 'Here comes the airplane' deal? She's extremely uncomfortable about being fed in public, and even more uncomfortable about the idea of putting her discomfort aside, leaning in, opening her mouth, and finding that that's not what Rachel really intended at all. This situation has humiliation written all over it. Rachel is waving the fork around dramatically and giving her a lecture on the use of fungus in the production of certain cheeses. After a particularly violent flourish, sauce flicks onto the table-cloth and the stem of Quinn's glass, and Rachel squeaks, like she's just remembered she's holding the thing, grabs her spoon and starts unloading the little bundle onto Quinn's plate.

Quinn smiles, closes her eyes for a second. Crisis averted. She eats the mushroom tagliatelle and tells Rachel it's close, but no cigar.

(It's not even close, who is she _kidding?_)

Rachel is beaming and saying "See, veganism doesn't have to hurt!" and Quinn says, "Are you trying to turn me now?" and immediately regrets it even though Rachel _laughs, _and asks "Is it so wrong to want you on my side?!"

Quinn acts quickly. Her mouth is full in no time and all she can do is smile and chew.

It's okay, anyway – Rachel's phone sings _do re mi, _and she pounces on it, apologizing as she does. "I know it's really rude," she says, "But it's all in a good… oh."

Her face falls, and she looks up at Quinn. "Kurt says he can't tweet you a haiku because he doesn't know your twitter, so what's your twitter please?"

"I don't have one," Quinn says.

Rachel narrows her eyes.

"What?" Quinn asks. It's true. She doesn't have a twitter. She didn't realize it had attained facebook status already. "Is it, like, necessary to have a twitter these days?"

Rachel considers. "Well, yes, if you want haikus. Or if you want to be a star. Social media is crucial. Our first task in Media Management was to set up a facebook and a myspace and a twitter and a blog and a youtube channel, but you know, I was ahead of the game there. I've had a youtube channel since youtube was invented - " She grins, closes her eyes, and Quinn feels her cheeks coloring already. "But you would know that – being one of my biggest fans."

Quinn shakes her head. She's speechless – literally. The thoughts are there, but she can't make the words come out. She wants to say: I _was _your biggest fan. I never _liked _you, but every hit was mine – every one – since you were invented - over and over – always.

She breathes in sharply and silently acknowledges she's probably a little drunk. She reaches for her glass and sucks down the last drops in it.

Rachel's still talking: "Anyway, Kurt and I are having this little competition, to see who can get the most followers on twitter, via our youtube videos, and even though he's still back in Lima, and _not _at the country's premiere performing arts academy, he's _winning, _which just goes to prove how much of an equalizer the internet is in this modern age." She shrugs, rolls her eyes. "Well, either that or how much more people like Kurt than me."

Quinn smiles. Rachel's telling her she _must _get a twitter. And she will – she might – maybe. But if she does she won't be following Kurt Hummell. She doesn't need his haikus. She has enough poetry of her own.

Right now she's thinking:

_So quickly – _

_a hand on the small of my heart._

_We start to mean something_

_I never meant_

_and I am spent._

_You have taken my value_

_and I'll tell you I – _

She blinks. Rachel's face is all crumpled. Her head is in her hands, she's telling her she has to sing on Monday morning and she has no idea what song to choose.

"Why don't you do _Rain On My Parade_?" Quinn suggests, "Just to show Thibodeaux you've broken the curse."

"What if I haven't though?" Rachel asks anxiously.

Quinn smiles at her lentils. She's still blinking. She feels bleary. She's not going to dignify that with a response.

When she looks up Rachel's shaking her head. "No, it's too safe. I mean, that's exactly why I chose it for my audition – it was safe. Everyone in there will be expecting that or _The Hills Are Alive. _I want…" She hesitates. "I want to make them all think they were wrong about me."

Quinn tips her head to one side, sets her fork down. She asks "Wrong how?"

"Just wrong," Rachel says, not looking at her.

Rachel takes two mouthfuls before Quinn returns to her lentils and says casually, "Why don't you do that song you sang last Christmas when we were putting the special together?"

_That song._

Quinn's not sure why she wants to pretend she can't remember the title.

Rachel looks puzzled. "Extraordinary Merry Christmas?" she asks haltingly.

"No," Quinn says, a little too quickly, perhaps. She's not a Grinch or anything, but there's something about that song that turns her stomach. "The other one," she says. And in a small voice she doesn't like: "The one about the river."

Rachel looks at Quinn thoughtfully. Then she looks at the tablecloth thoughtfully. She says "Really?" and "Artie was so down on me about that one."

"Artie doesn't know what he's talking about," Quinn says absent-mindedly. She smiles, softens, "Or more precisely, he was looking for something different – something with commercial appeal - " she takes Rachel's word " – something safe."

Rachel smiles and says "I miss Artie."

Quinn's not sure if she didn't get the point or if it was just so obvious she didn't feel the need to communicate that she got the point. She says, again absent-mindedly, "I miss Artie too."

"You do?" Rachel asks. She sounds relieved.

Quinn nods then shakes her head, smiles with both. "You know we were becoming such good chair buddies I was kind of bummed when I could walk again."

"I wasn't," Rachel says. She shudders – or she mimes a shudder – no – _and _she mimes a shudder. Rachel always goes the extra mind to body mile, Quinn thinks.

"The thought of you never dancing again was just…" Rachel shuts her eyes, puts both hands up like _Stop, _and starts saying "And the thought of it being because of - "

"Because I chose to take my eyes off the road," Quinn interjects primly.

"Don't say that," Rachel pleads.

"Why not?" Quinn asks. She starts shoveling lentils onto her fork and takes a cheerful mouthful. "It's what happened."

"It makes it sound like you think it's your fault."

"_You _think it's _your _fault," Quinn says, amused, "And you weren't even there."

Rachel puts her elbow on the table and her forehead in her palm. "I told you to _hurry,_" she moans.

"And that still wouldn't be relevant even if I'd chosen to speed."

Rachel's hand is covering her eyes now. She peeks out crossly. "You make it sound like nobody ever does anything because of somebody else," she says.

Quinn is quiet. She eats her lentils. She waits until Rachel has gone back to her tagliatelle. Then she asks, "Why didn't you just get married that day? You got everyone dressed up – the flowers – the cake. Why didn't you just do it without me?"

"What do you mean?" Rachel asks, like she genuinely doesn't understand the question.

Quinn gives her a clue. "You were going to do it without me when I said you shouldn't do it at all."

Rachel squints. "I couldn't get married while you were nearly dying on the side of the road," she says in disbelief.

Quinn opens her mouth. She pauses. Then she shrugs. "You didn't know that though," she says, "Not for hours, right?"

Rachel's expression does not change.

Quinn shrugs again. Or maybe it's a stretch. Maybe it's just an excuse to move. She feels uncomfortable. "For all you knew I could have just stopped for a mocha," she says.

"No," Rachel replies softly, like that's the last word on the matter.

She pours herself more wine, and nearly knocks her glass over.

Quinn thinks this place should have lighter wine bottles too.

"Anyway, I'm sorry I ruined everything," she says, even though she's really, really not, and Rachel knows she's really, really not, and maybe these days Rachel's not even all that sorry herself, as impossible as that once seemed.

Rachel doesn't say anything. Quinn can't quite bring herself to look up. She's spearing individual lentils with the prongs of her fork. It's difficult and requires much of her attention. "I can't believe I was just lying there like a lump for nearly a week," she says flippantly, "So _lazy._"

"Stop," Rachel says, and she sounds so serious.

Quinn can't help laughing.

"_Stop,_" Rachel says again, only _sharply _this time.

Quinn is silenced. Her eyes are wide. If Rachel had raised her voice any more she would actually have been yelling at her.

"I came in to see you every day that you didn't wake up," Rachel says through gritted teeth, "I promise it wasn't funny."

Quinn feels the color drain from her face. She imagines herself in grayscale with dots for eyes and no mouth. "What?" she says in something far too close to a whisper. "Why…"

She hesitates, and Rachel begins to look like she thinks that was a question and she might have to reply. Quinn finishes quickly, "Why didn't you tell me?"

Rachel tips her head to one side. "You were in a coma?" she asks, like maybe it's funny after all.

"No, I mean…" Quinn blinks rapidly. She has that feeling again. The one she had when Rachel first arrived. Her right knee is shaking under the table. "After," she clarifies.

Rachel looks down, shrugs half-heartedly, then looks up again. "I guess it seemed sort of…" she takes several seconds to choose a word, goes with "Boastful."

Quinn raises an eyebrow. Just one. The other doesn't seem to be working.

Rachel rolls her eyes and waves a hand. "Like I'd be saying 'Oh, well I was there the most, so I must care the most.'"

Quinn says, "That argument is sound." _Premise, inference, conclusion, _she thinks, _premise, inference, conclusion._

Rachel looks very uncomfortable. It probably has something to do with Quinn's gray face. She still has lots of wine left in her glass and Quinn has none. Rachel takes a sip and says "I figured your mom would mention it," adds, "maybe," as an afterthought.

"No," Quinn says. She feels bereft. She feels like she's just hanging. Like a sentence without a period on the end of it or a name with no upper case to start it up.

"We had some good chats," Rachel says, bubbling along again, "Well not so much chats – more her crying convulsively and me listing your many virtues and talents. Which…" she frowns, "only seemed to make her convulse more."

"It was… it was kind of you," Quinn stutters. She's thinking _Virtues, talents, conclusion, virtues, talents, conclusion._

Rachel's saying, "When I came on the Friday they told me you woke up and you couldn't see anybody yet. I left cupcakes with the ward sister."

She's saying something else when Quinn says, "I ate those cupcakes."

Rachel's brow furrows. "Were they good?" she asks softly. "I used real butter and everything."

"They were the best cupcakes I had ever eaten," Quinn says. She's not sure if that's true. She honestly can't remember what they tasted like. She would have paid more attention if she'd known Rachel Berry baked them for her.

_Rachel Berry baked them for her._

It's the strangest thing that's been true in a long time.

Quinn is busy marveling. It takes a lot out of her. Everything takes a lot out of you when you're intoxicated, she reminds herself, so she's busy marveling – it's taking her a little longer than it otherwise might – it's been who knows how long and she's still swallowing quick feelings and straining for the sense memory – the cakes – what did they look like - how did they taste – how did they feel in her mouth – what was it like –

She closes her eyes. She smiles. She is busy. Otherwise she would have noticed that Rachel stopped talking, she would have noticed the worry etching itself across her features at least a full minute before she says, "Quinn, where's the bathroom?"

Quinn opens her eyes. She considers the question. She's already reproaching herself for not knowing the answer before she realizes she's never actually been here before, so Rachel's guess is as good as hers.

She looks behind Rachel and then from side to side. Then she looks behind herself and sees a sign. There's a couple literally sucking face at the next table – Quinn's surprised she didn't hear the smacking sound.

She turns back to Rachel and gestures to the far left corner, "It's down that way," she says.

Rachel flutters past her, whispering "Thank you."

* * *

Rachel's not sure what happened. One minute she was fine, then the next minute she sort of needed to pee, then the minute after that she needed to pee in the same way you need to throw up.

She presses the flush, presses her face against the tiles on the back wall of the stall as she does, wonders why on earth she asked Quinn where the bathroom was when she was staring right at the little man and the little lady in their little Punch and Judy outfits.

She's a fool.

_I'm a fool, _she thinks, miserably, with a smile.

It takes her thirty seconds to get out of the stall. That may not seem like a long time, but it sure is when you're beginning to think you may actually be trapped. This has long been one of Rachel's nightmares: being stuck in a small space, no escape. She used to sing, sometimes, in her dreams, as loud as she could, long, belted notes to get her out of there.

It worked more often than not. Her brain imagined her mouth opening and then her mouth would open, and what would come out was something like the way the victims in horror movies scream.

She knows this only because papa would always run in to wake her and hold her while she came back to the world, and he would always tell her he thought something terrible was happening to her, and she would always tell him she was just belting out Christina Aguilera's _The Voice Within _or _Evergreen _by oh please she didn't need to specify. She knows this only because papa would always run in to wake her and eventually she insisted on hooking up a camera to capture the moment – and also to settle the dispute as to whether she was singing or screaming.

The Girl From Ipanema is playing. Rachel is sure it wasn't playing in the restaurant, but then she has been in here for a length of time she is completely powerless to determine. She hums along.

_Mm, mm mmmm, Mm Mm mm mmmm… _

The hundred and somethingth time she jiggles the latch the door swings free and she falls with it, stumbles over to the basins with a sigh of relief.

They're a couple – a couple of basins – Rachel puts a hand into each and leans down slowly, till her chin is resting on the polished wood between.

She feels hot. She feels overwhelmed.

_This is alcohol, _she thinks, and she thinks she's lucky Quinn chugged down the better part of the bottle before she could get to it. At least she _thinks _she did. It's true what they say: it's hard to stop once you've started, and anyway, she needed a drink, or she felt like she thinks you'd feel if you needed a drink – she feels hot, she feels overwhelmed.

She sort of wants to crawl into one of the basins and take a nap. It seems like it would be big enough. But then, it also seems like it would be soft, and that can't be right.

Rachel frowns. She knocks on the side of the right basin. She sings to it.

"_When_ she walks, she's _like _a samba, that _swings_ so cool, and _sways_ so – "

Somebody comes in and she stands to attention, turns the faucet with such vigor that the water splashes onto her top. She glances back at the extremely tall, rather rotund lady who is asking her if she's all right.

"Yes!" Rachel says brightly. "I'm very well, thank you! Thank you for asking! You too!"

The lady nods with a bemused little smile and heads for a stall.

Rachel sighs. She shuffles over to the drier and sticks her hands under it. It comes to sound-drowning life, like magic, and she sings gently into its warm buzz "_Oooh _but I watch her so sadly…"


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's note: **So happy to be back! Merry Faberry everybody!

* * *

By the time Rachel comes back to the table Quinn is halfway through a glass of Sauternes and the bowl of sorbet she ordered for Rachel is threatening to become a bowl of fruit soup.

She's been gone that long.

Quinn has been tugging at her napkin and wondering how much stronger she'd need to be to pull it apart like it was made of paper. She never does this. She never fidgets. It has been so long since she has let herself.

She remembers the deportment classes her mother ran from home for a summer. Three people came and she knew them all well, of course – it wasn't so much a class, really, as an excuse to get out the good china and reflect on how the behavior of others could be improved.

Quinn was fourteen, and every Wednesday and Friday morning from 10:30 to 11:45 she sat quietly on the edge of her seat with her ankles crossed and her hands folded. She thought she was a model of composure, until one day the woman next to her leaned in and whispered to her to stop scrunching her toes in her sandals.

Her mother overheard. "It's a sign of weakness," she agreed, "Movement without purpose. A no-no. Excellent point, Candy."

She's on the edge of her seat now and her toes are scrunching like nobody's business. By the time she finally sees Rachel exiting the bathroom she's actually started hovering about the chair, wondering at what point it's fair to follow someone in there; at what point it's fair to assume that a dinner-type-friend has crawled out the window and legged it.

She frowns. _Dinner-type-friend. _She's not even sure Rachel's really the d – She interrupts herself uneasily. _They always do that in the cartoons, _she think, nodding idiotically as Rachel approaches at a cross between a shuffle and a run.

Quinn sips her drink, thinks _Rachel could be a cartoon, _and then she is there and buckling her shoe and looking up and smiling.

"Hi," she says brightly, and then "Ooooh," when she spies dessert. She almost knocks the waitress over when she stands up.

"Oh, I'm so _sorry_," she says excitably, and the waitress, says, "It's fine," in a muttered kind of way like it's probably not.

She picks up Rachel's napkin from the floor, walks away and returns a second later with a fresh one, which she places on her lap.

"Ohhh _thank you,_" Rachel says, and she scoops a heaped spoonful of sorbet into her mouth with the same enthusiasm.

"It's fine," the waitress says again, and Quinn's eyes un-narrow a little because it seems sincere. Maybe she's just socially awkward. Maybe she's just accidentally rude to everyone.

Quinn sips her sweet wine, and in a faraway place she hears Rachel asking for another spoon.

"Oh no, it's okay," she interjects quickly, "that won't be necess – "

"Yes it will!" Rachel says cheerfully looking straight at her.

Quinn falters. "No, I…" she says, and then she nods and the waitress is on her way. She doesn't want to eat sorbet, but she realizes at the last moment that if she insists on not needing another spoon, Rachel may think she just wants to use hers, and then they'll be back in that awkward place where cutlery is hovering between them, and the sorbet will drip on the tablecloth, and Quinn will blush and Rachel won't have any idea why.

_Neither will I, _she thinks crossly, messily. _Neither. Will. I. _

"This is exactly what I needed!" Rachel exclaims, right before another heaped spoonful goes into her mouth, "It's so _hot _in here, I mean I was actually sweating into my shirt."

"Is it?" Quinn asks, then "Are you?" She tips her head to one side and her whole body relaxes. "I do feel warm," she observes.

"What you got there?" Rachel asks, nodding at her little glass.

Quinn smiles. "Sauternes. It's a dessert wine, basically. Sweet and sort of strong. You wanna try?"

She holds the glass out and its contents glimmer in the candlelight.

Rachel shakes her head, smiles, looks down at her sorbet and scoops another spoonful. "No, no," she says, "To be honest, my head's kind of…" she twirls her free hand around whilst eating, and then says around the mouthful, "…making… like… circles?"

Quinn smiles. "Your head is spinning," she says evenly. She takes another sip of her wine. She really does feel warm. And golden. And maybe her head is kind of making circles too.

She watches Rachel eat her sorbet and chug along merrily about how she thinks one of them is blackberry, but she _knows _one of them is raspberry, and raspberries are better than strawberries except that they get hurt easier, and…"

Quinn smiles again, or maybe she was still smiling. She drains the last of her wine. She thinks maybe it's okay. Maybe it's okay to just sit here and watch Rachel eat fruit soup and feel warm and golden and fond of her.

She thinks that just for tonight maybe it's okay to just be fond of Rachel – and let the rest – let it go.

She unfurls her hand from the stem of the glass and makes it loose on the table.

_Let it go, _she thinks.

Rachel says once she dressed up as a raspberry for Halloween, and Quinn's other hand makes a fist in her lap.

Rachel keeps dabbing at the corners of her mouth. She's not aware of much at the moment, but she is always aware of the ways sorbet or any similar dessert can get all over her face. Once she spent the whole back half of a date with Finn with a smear of mango on her chin and he didn't say a word. She remembers explaining to him the next day that it is imperative that he tell her these things, especially as one of these days she's going to be a celebrity, and this is exactly the kind of embarrassment the paparazzi line their pockets with. He said it didn't matter, she looked beautiful, with or without fruit on her face, and she smiled and kissed him and closed her eyes and remembered that wasn't the point.

She gulps water. The sorbet is sweet and the wine already had her thirsty. She's not sure how long it's been since she said something but she's pretty sure Quinn hasn't said a word since then, whenever it was.

And she looks… tired, maybe. Bored? Maybe? Rachel squints and holds her spoon aloft for no reason. It is not a magnifying glass, she reminds herself. But she can see from here that Quinn's eyes are heavy-lidded and she's biting her lip and looking at her glass like it's the Mona Lisa.

Rachel's never seen the Mona Lisa, but she's seen people looking at it in photographs.

She frowns and licks her lips thoroughly. She doesn't want to decide exactly how Quinn feels. She wants to just say she's calm – that's all. But Quinn is always calm – except when she's not, of course. And that's so rare, isn't it? It's hen's teeth, Rachel thinks, whatever on earth those are. The crying – the slapping – the out-of-control... Rachel thinks nobody in this room would dream Quinn was capable of any of that. She thinks people who've known her for years would swear she was a liar if she told them about the life and times of the two of them.

Maybe she does know Quinn after all, she thinks. Maybe the facts don't matter – the know and tells. The show and tell is what she has and maybe it's enough. Quinn has slapped her on prom night. Quinn has played a game of Monopoly with her that never ended. Surely, by anybody's standards, that makes them friends. Surely it makes them friends that if she ever plays Monopoly again, in a couple of months, or in twenty years, or when she's old and in a luxurious retirement home reflecting on her glorious career… she is sure she will pick the dog, and she is sure she will call it Rufus.

She smiles. "You know I always wanted a dog," she says, and Quinn looks up. "But my dad's allergic – well," she leans in, rolls her eyes, "He _said _he was allergic. Honestly what I think he had a problem with was the prospect of having to fend all its attempts at affection off with a lint brush." Her smile widens. She wonders if Quinn minds dogs – the kind of dogs that jump all over you without asking first – maybe she'll ask first – soon – she'll ask if Quinn minds dogs - she wonders if…

She's still talking while she wonders: "I remember hearing papa saying we could get a black dog if he was worried about his suit coats, and dad said not all of his suit coats were black, though, some were pastel, and then papa said how would he feel about getting a poodle or one of those things Paris Hilton has that looked like a plucked chicken, and dad just _looked _at him." She chuckles, shakes her head. "He said, 'Hiram, we are not a stereotype.'" She closes her eyes, drops her spoon and clutches her chest. "God, I really _miss _them," she says.

Quinn smiles. She almost asks why Rachel didn't take the weekend to go home then,but stops herself just in time. Instead she says, "My dad was the same. Although he blamed it on the fact that we took too many vacations overseas." She makes air-quotes. "'It's not fair to a pup.' He was probably right."

She feels a sadness creeping over her all of a sudden, and then just as suddenly it's not creeping anymore, it's running all over the place, and she's running with it, she's saying, "My friend growing up – one of my friends – he had two dogs that used to sleep in the bed with him. I used to spend a lot of time round his place, when my mom didn't..." She stops running. Now is not the time to hash out the issues between her mother and her best friend who was a boy and gave her a GI-Joe for Christmas. "… have me doing chores or homework or whatever," she finishes hastily, thinking as she does how she never did have the guts to tell her she'd asked for it – her mother – the GI-Joe.

Rachel's nodding and saying, "See now I didn't even have any friends with dogs! Or, you know, any friends at all, really, but that's another matter." She's eating her sorbet and she's thinking she's sure Quinn almost told her a secret – she's thinking even if Quinn told her a thousand secrets after tonight she'd never know if it was the right one – this one – that one - the one she almost got.

"I'm sure you did," Quinn is protesting. She knows Rachel isn't the type of girl who would have been a popular as a kid. She isn't the kind of girl who will ever be popular, most likely, no matter how many people will beg, borrow and steal to see her sing. But she can't imagine that once upon a time there wasn't some little girl – or boy - who adored the things that others decried.

Rachel frowns, and shakes her head dismissively. "I was quite alienating, even as a child. I like to think it makes me special."

"Maybe it does," Quinn agrees, and when Rachel laughs she wonders if it was meant to be a joke.

"Anyway, I was fine," Rachel says, with her head held high and something like a pout, "I didn't need anybody. I had Fred and Audrey."

"Astaire and Hepburn?" Quinn asks.

"Correct," Rachel says, and she reaches across the table and pats Quinn's hand about it. "They had funny faces! But they were hermit crabs, you know, so they couldn't really dance that well. Or sing. But that was okay, because I would do the singing, and let's face it, I've always liked it better that way."

Quinn has closed her eyes. She's laughing when she opens them. "I'm sorry?" she asks "Hermit crabs?"

"Yes!" Rachel says, "They don't shed, you see. Or do much of anything at all." She grins. Quinn downs what's left of her golden stuff Rachel can't remember the name of. She thinks she'll ask her how she feels about hermit crabs – really – the unvarnished truth, Quinn, she will say, hermit crabs, yes? No? Maybe you just haven't met the right -

The extra spoon arrives and all the sorbet is gone. Rachel is crestfallen and covers her mouth, Quinn keeps shaking her head, and it's as though the two of them are having the conversation without words – the one that goes 'Oh my god, I ate all the sorbet, I am such a dope, I'm gonna order more, let me order more? Or do you want something else? Wait why didn't you get any dessert?' and is peppered with protestations from Quinn about how she didn't want any, it's okay, stop fussing, Rachel, it's fine, really, _stop._

And so she does, and they get their coats even though Rachel says it's so _hot_ and Quinn agrees again that yes, she does feel warm, and they head for the door – Quinn stalks, Rachel potters – and when they push it open – the two of them at once, Rachel with an _oof _sound, Quinn looking behind her and smiling at the maître d' – it's _cold._

Rachel as good as shrieks, and wraps her coat quickly around her shoulders. "What happened?" she asks Quinn, and Quinn smiles.

"You'll get used to it," she says, slipping her own jacket on. She smooths her hair and finds several pins come out in her hands. She should probably just leave it alone, but she can't help trying to fix it, without a mirror, walking down the street, and quite frankly, a little drunk. Distantly she hears a pin clatter to the sidewalk. "It's like a cold shower in summer," she says around the one in her mouth. "Eventually it feels good."

"I've never taken a cold shower in my life," Rachel says proudly. Quinn's not sure why, but she laughs, and laughs. They've been walking for about a minute when Rachel suddenly turns and grabs her, eyes wide, mouth open. "_Quinn!_" she squeals. "Did we just dine and dash? _Oh my god I think we just dined and dashed._"

She starts running back the way they came, pulling her purse out of her bag and notes out of her purse, calling anxiously to Quinn over her shoulder, "Do you hear sirens?" and "I have _never _dined and dashed in my life," and by the time Quinn can catch up with her and get to stop, she's actually started crying.

Quinn covers her mouth with her hand, steadies Rachel with her other hand. "It's okay," she says, "I got the check when you were in the bathroom taking a vacation."

"Oh…" Rachel says, and "Oh thank god." She wipes the tears that have fallen away quickly and smiles sheepishly. "I'm scared of police officers, Quinn," she confides. "You know how I stole that fake dollar bill?" She laughs a little, then out of nowhere, like someone said something funny, she starts laughing again in earnest. "My dads found out – to this day I have no clue how – and they decided to teach me a lesson about – their exact words – "the grand consequences of petty crime". So they got their friend Barry to come around in his uniform and give me an official caution – except Barry wasn't actually a cop, you know, I think he just had the costume from Halloween or…" - she covers her eyes and grins – "_something. _Anyway, I knew he was Barry because he and his partner Simon were like, my dads' best friends and came over every other week for dinner, but they kept telling me it _wasn't _Barry, and then of course I started crying, not because I was in trouble so much as because I'd known this man since I was three and I was _sure _he was Barry. And anyway, then my other dad – the sensible one – he came in from the kitchen and was all "This has gone far enough." So they started arguing back and forth and then one of them said they were going to call the _actual _cops, and one way or another, by the end of all of that… I'm scared of police officers, Quinn."

Rachel smiles, nudges a silent Quinn. They've been walking while she's been talking; she can't have fallen asleep on her.

"Sorry…" Quinn says, but she doesn't sound it.

She doesn't feel it.

What she does feel is sleepy and self-indulgent and unaware. She thinks: it's like it's easy to pretend she isn't where she is, like it's easy to pretend she isn't with Rachel at all – only watching her – only listening to her long, little stories – like the way you sit in a movie theatre surrounded by people and you all pretend you're all alone.

Quinn frowns. Unless you're up the back making out. But she's never been that kind of girl – there's something tawdry about paying to make out, even if you're not paying the –

Rachel's telling her another story and she missed the start. She's thrusting wads of cash at her and saying "Quinn! Quinn!"

"What?" she says, pausing to grab a twenty dollar bill before it blows away. She shoves it quickly back into Rachel's accidentally open palm. "No, no, no, it's fine, Rachel, it was my treat."

Rachel shakes her head and says some more things Quinn misses while she's taking her money and shoving it back into her purse. "But!" Rachel says, and "But!" and then she says, "You can't pay! It's not like we're on a date! Oh my god, I bet they think we were on a date. They must be thinking we were on a date?"

Quinn snorts. "Relax, Rachel," she says, "What they think if they think anything at all is probably…" - she slips a ten dollar bill into Rachel's coat pocket, Rachel slips a twenty into hers. – "exactly what's happening right now."

"What do you mean?" Rachel asks distractedly, anxiously collecting the coins she tried to get into Quinn's hand from the sidewalk.

"You," Quinn says, "Giving me money." She crouches down and helps her, snatches her purse and diligently drops the coins in.

"Yes," Rachel wails, tipping the coins out, realizing her mistake, tipping them back in along with her mascara, three old subway tickets, a tissue and a packet of mints. "But you're not _taking it._"

They're walking again in no time. Or Quinn is walking and Rachel is hurrying. She casts a sidelong glance her way and thinks it's strange, she has the exact same look on her face she had when she came back from not-a-meeting last night.

_Guilty, _Rachel thinks, _how does that work when I'm the one eating for free?_

She tells herself _No, no, _she is not going to decide what Quinn is feeling. She catches up at a run, pulls out the dollar bill that has somehow found its way into her shirt and throws it at Quinn.

"Take it!" she says, with what she knows is exaggerated vehemence.

Quinn squeals, laughs, runs, leaves the dollar to the wind – she can let her lose that much in the name of fun. "Stop throwing your fake dollar bills at me, Rachel!" she exclaims breathlessly, and Rachel's about to protest that her dollar bills are not fake, thank you, but instead she clutches her side and says "Stop! Stop! I think I'm having a heart attack," and Quinn doesn't stop laughing, but she does shuffle quickly back to where she is.

Quinn laughs. She wants to check Rachel's pulse. Or tell her she's being silly. Or ask if she's never had a stitch before. Or make fun of her for being drunk on a thimbleful of wine. She wants to do everything at the same time, and she does nothing except stand still and check her giggles and say, when she has them checked, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Rachel says, and she seems serious – suddenly solemn again, and she opens her mouth and closes it and opens it again and just before she can speak Quinn says soberly "You know, my dad is a drunk"

"Really?" Rachel asks weakly, and Quinn looks down at the ground beneath her feet.

"For a while," she says, carefully, like you walk in a straight line for the cops, gingerly, like you walk the plank for pirates, "For a _while _I thought he turned into a drunk because he was so depressed – because mom threw him out – because of me." She swallows, lifts her head slowly. Rachel might be holding her breath. She looks unnaturally still. Quinn smiles and her shoulders sag. She says, "But then I looked back and I realized… no… he was always a drunk… more or less." She shrugs. "And my mom kind of was too."

"Really?" Rachel says again. Quinn's half turned around, ready to keep walking, but Rachel is still not moving.

Quinn nods and takes a step. She's thinking of what she said earlier today about scrabble and how it always ends in tears. It was meant to be a joke – and Rachel laughed – and Quinn was glad. But thinking about it now it was also a matter of fact. Scrabble always did end in tears for the Fabray family.

It was never long before the dictionary came out and the whiskey came with it. Her dad and her sister would always – _always – _argue over whether something like 'shiraz' was a word – "An _American _word," her father would say in something like a snarl, and Frannie would snarl right back and call him a xenophobe, and Quinn would spend the whole afternoon trying to make little teeny tiny words no one would notice, and her mom would say, over and over, to nobody, as though she had long ago learned not to expect an answer: "When is it my turn?"

Quinn smiles to herself. Rachel's saying something like "That must be really difficult," and Quinn interrupts her a full second before she realizes it's rude. "My mom's tee-total now though,' she says, and then softly, "Sorry."

Rachel shakes her head like _No, please, _and Quinn continues. "Ever since she let me come back home. Ever since he left. She doesn't touch alcohol." Quinn smiles, nods back the way they came. "Not so much as a glass of wine with dinner," she says.

Rachel swallows and sways. She's not sure if this is the kind of thing she wanted to know. Or rather she's not sure if it's the kind of thing Quinn wants her to know. Maybe she'll be sorry in the morning. Maybe she'll say the wrong thing before she can change the subject and Quinn will hate her forever –again – just like she used to before they were friends.

"Good for her," Rachel says, awkwardly.

"Good for her," Quinn echoes, like it wasn't awkward at all. And then she says, "What you told me about Shelby and Puck. How I should be angry. If I'm honest…"

She waits for a long time. Then she shakes her head, keeps walking.

"If you're honest?" Rachel prompts from behind her, just when Quinn's started thinking maybe she won't be.

Two confessions in one day. She is not used to this.

She sighs, stands still, sets off. "If I'm honest, I was never really angry about that because I was too busy being angry about everything else." She glances back at Rachel, puts her hands in her jacket pockets as she does. "I was just looking for an excuse."

Rachel nods. She puts her hands in her pockets too. "And then you found one."

"And then you ruined it for me," Quinn says, smiling.

"Sorry 'bout that," Rachel says, smiling back.

Quinn doesn't see. She's watching the ground beneath her feet again.

They're walking very slowly now. Rachel thinks it's okay. Quinn thinks it's okay, too. If they miss this bus there are still three more to go. If they miss those they can sleep under the stars.

She smiles. She bargains down. _We can call a cab._ And just when she's about to try to hail one in an empty street, Rachel asks "Do you miss Beth?"

Quinn thinks – or tries to think. It's hard with the better part of a bottle of wine and then some in you. Eventually she shrugs and says "It's hard to miss someone you never really had."

She snorts, kicks at a twig, nearly stumbles, rights herself expertly. "I mean apart from in the way with the screaming and the panting and the taking the lord's name in vain."

Rachel laughs lightly. "_Right,_" she says. And then they're not walking anymore, because she touches Quinn's shoulder and says "You know I wish I'd been there for that – to help you with the screaming and panting."

Quinn laughs. Not lightly. Loudly. For a second she's worried there will be saliva. "I'm sorry," she's saying, her hand over her mouth, her body convulsing. "It was just the _way _you said it. You were so _serious _and I just – I just – I – "

She's actually cackling – the way Rachel sometimes used to cackle in Glee when they were up past ten o'clock and she was hopped up on twizzlers and ambition. "_I just,_" she wheezes.

"Don't _laugh _at me," Rachel protests, laughing a little herself. "You're not supposed to _laugh!_"

Quinn's sorry, maybe, but she's not even trying to stop. It's the most freeing thing, laughing like this. She feels like her insides have fallen apart and there's no need to put anything back together, at least not until tomorrow.

Rachel whines good-naturedly, and Quinn can barely hear her above the blood rushing to her head, but she thinks amid the drawled _Stoooooops _and _Doooooon'ts_ there's something like_ Everybody's always laughing at me, _and she says, recklessly, still on the verge of further cackles "_Who?! _I'll beat them up!"

"No you _woooooon't,_" Rachel says, still stretching her o's out.

Quinn makes a sound like _What would you know, _and says "Have you even seen my guns?"

"_Oh my god, _you won't _shoot _anybody," Rachel scoffs.

Quinn says _"What?!" _and she's not quite sure what happened, but she's grabbing Rachel before she hits the sidewalk.

She holds onto her until they've both stopped wobbling, says "Bend your knees more," asks, "Have you ever been skiing?"

"It's a lot drunker outside," Rachel replies.

Quinn smiles, swallows, sighs, plots a straight line in front of them. "You're always a lot more drunk when you let yourself be drunk," she says. "It's crazy how long you can stay on the edge… how fast you fall when you jump in..."

Rachel's not listening. "Everybody laughs at me on the inside," she says, as seriously as you can say things when you're small and inebriated and wearing mary janes and have coins in the sleeve of your cardigan somehow, and _in your bra, _somehow. She sighs. "Everybody will laugh on Monday when I sing."

She grabs Quinn's arm for support or to make a point, Quinn's not sure, and neither is she. "Do you think I overdo it?" she asks anxiously, "Leanne says I overdo it. One time I said I'm just being myself and she said I was overdoing that especially."

"Leanne is a horrible idiot," Quinn says bluntly, and as she says it she thinks she can remember, in a land far, far away, further than the sidewalk, further than the other side of a little table, she thinks she can remember telling Rachel she should try to be less like Rachel. She thinks she can remember almost everyone in Glee club saying something to that effect at some point in one way or another.

She thinks she probably said it more than once.

Quinn pulls together again – squeezes tight – her whole body is a fist for a second or two or however many it takes till Rachel is twenty feet ahead.

She runs to catch up. She's shivering now. It really is cold, even if she only remembers that in pinpricks the size of moments – no, moments the size of pinpricks – whatever – that's not the point - the point is she feels warm – the point is she should have worn the sensible jacket instead of the pretty one – the point is –

"You're the top, Rachel," Quinn calls out, before she has thought – before she has caught her breath – before she has even made it all the way to where she is - and Rachel turns around with a furrowed brow.

"You know," Quinn smiles, forgets to check if the street is still empty, sings, out loud: _"You're the top! You're a turkey dinner!"_

Rachel beams. The response is immediate. It cannot be contained, and she can't see any reason why she would contain it if she could.

Quinn is feeling that feeling again - the Julie-Anne and the twinkie feeling – warm – allowed – let in – _wanted._

Rachel takes two syncopated steps backwards – forwards - whatever you want to call it. "It's sublime," she corrects. "I'm sublime, if I'm the dinner."

"You're sublime," Quinn concedes quickly. She feels her face flush. She wrinkles her nose. She remembers the enormous steak she almost ordered, the fish that was smaller and less bloody, but just as dead and just as alive once. "You're the time of a Derby winner," she says apologetically.

Rachel grins, ducks her head, says "I could be the turkey_'s_ dinner next time. Like… grain. And Worms?" She turns, all the way back around, says "The bus stop still looks so tiny and yellow. Like in a dollhouse. Like in a doll town."

She starts walking again and Quinn follows.

_I'm a toy balloon that's fated soon to pop._

Not out loud – only on the inside – only small – only by the way.

_But if baby I'm the bottom you're the top._


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note: **Hi guys! What's this? another new chapter? :O By the way, the rating has been bumped up to M for cursing, because I've had fics pulled before over that. So don't get too excited. At least not yet.

* * *

Quinn swings the door open so hard the knob hits the wall.

"Oh!" she exclaims, and softer, "Oh!"

She hurries around the door to check if there's any damage, clutching her toiletries bag to her chest. It's okay. It's just a scratch. Or maybe there's no scratch at all. She frowns at her reflection. She's over by the basins and she knows she checked the wall but she cannot for the life of her remember what she saw.

She shakes her head. Maybe she doesn't need to know. Maybe it's better not to.

"Rachel!" she calls out, for no good reason.

"I'm _peeing!_" Rachel calls back. "Don't _listen!_"

Quinn grins and shakes her head. She heads for the next stall and tells Rachel half of her theory: "If I pee too then it won't be weird, because…"

She forgets why. She forgets what she's saying altogether.

"I can't hear anything," she calls out, between sudden giggles, "Can you?"

The reply she gets: An anguished, "Yes, I can hear everything, it's awful!" and the sound of flushing.

Quinn says _"Rachel," _again for no good reason, and Rachel doesn't hear.

She shrugs, flushes, and again swings the door open too hard – so hard it almost smacks her in the face on its way back.

She squeals – loudly – and Rachel has turned around, crouched down, has her hands over her head, is saying rapidly "What? What? What?"

Quinn shakes her head. "Nothing," she says, and "Sheesh," with a smile that's several sizes too big for her.

She slinks to the basins the way her mother used to plead with her to slink, back when her mother used to plead with her to enter pageants. Rachel turns close to the ground, and stands up with awkward caution. She joins her at the basin and turns the faucet, loads her hands up with about three times more soap than is necessary.

_Rinse, repeat, _she thinks, _Bacteria are the enemy. _

Quinn wipes her hands on her towel and pulls her toothbrush out of her bag.

She glances at Rachel in the mirror and sees that she is pushing her hair back with a headband and slathering something that looks worryingly like cold cream all over her face.

"It's not the 1970's, you know," Quinn says, except she has foam all through her mouth, and a toothbrush in there too, so it comes out more like "Thl thlo thlenth, thlo."

Rachel smiles benevolently at her in the mirror. She couldn't possibly have understood a word she said, but she assumes it was something pleasant.

Perhaps she likes her headband. It's only the terry toweling one, but it does have cats on it.

She wonders if Quinn likes cats. They still haven't discussed that matter. And they had _all night. _Rachel frowns and the cold cream lumps around. She rinses her hands off and starts brushing her teeth too, and then the two of them are in sync – literally – up down up down - ch ch ch! – and Rachel's eyes are bigger and deeper and darker than usual against the all-white moon of her cold-creamed face.

Quinn realizes she's stopped brushing and decides that means she's had enough. She laughs – spits and laughs - and Rachel says "Whlar?" and, and "Loo ly halz?" She spits too, and before Quinn can answer (What? "Your eyes are big?" "You look like the moon?") Rachel asks breathlessly, "What's your favorite movie?" She resumes brushing.

Quinn rinses her mouth out. "You know," she says, "if you brush too hard too much you can actually damage your gums."

"Whlar?" Rachel asks again, then "Wloovell," with a stern crinkling of her brow that makes the cream bunch again.

Quinn grins. "Alright, alright," she says. She pumps her foam cleanser out and rubs it into her cheeks in gentle circles, looks thoughtful while she's at it, even though she finds she can't think at all. _Movies, movies, movies, _is about the extent of her deliberations, and for some reason _Cats, _even though that's a musical and she's pretty sure they haven't made a movie yet. She's pretty sure she doesn't know a single song from it either. She wonders if Rachel would be scandalized. She wonders if she'd say she knows them all, of course, every word, and would launch into a one-woman rendition right there on the spot.

She grins. "The Shawshank Redemption," she says, with a sudden yawn.

Rachel spits hurriedly. "Oh!" she exclaims excitedly. "The one with the guy and the little mouse?"

"Uh uh," Quinn says. She rinses her face, and when she looks back, Rachel is rinsing hers. She waits until she's done and says, "That's The Green Mile. It's good too, though."

Rachel shrugs. She's pulled her hair out and she's brushing it as vigorously as she brushed her teeth. Quinn hopes she doesn't hurt it. It's so long and fine. She opens her mouth to say that brushing 100 times can actually be bad for –

Rachel says, "Well I never actually saw it, only the photos of the big guy and the little mouse. But it looked _excellent._"

Quinn smiles. "I don't have a prison fetish or anything," she says, and Rachel looks at her funny.

Quinn thinks about explaining why that was a perfectly sensible quip to make, shakes her head and starts dabbing at her eyelids with a q-tip soaked in eye-makeup remover. "Anything with Audrey," she says softly.

"Oooh Audrey!" Rachel coos loudly, "She was so cute!" She's disentangling an imaginary knot in the air, and her fingers are making spidery little movements.

Quinn bursts out laughing and nearly pokes herself in the eye. "Not your hermit crab, Rachel," she teases.

"I _know,_" Rachel says resentfully, and "_Sheesh_._"_ She's moved onto moisturizer. Quinn counted thirty strokes. The hair is safe. "Frank and _Audrey,_" she says wistfully, and then, much more brightly, "Favorite novel!"

Quinn doesn't hesitate. "Great Expectations," she says, as her eye cream goes on.

(La Mer. Her mother pays. A year ago she would leave it untouched on the bathroom counter, even scoop regular lumps down the drain in the name of rebellion (her mother would check the levels). Now that just seems silly – senseless - short-sighted. She wants to be attractive after all – for as long as she needs – for as long it takes – for as long as –

Quinn misses Rachel's reply. Rachel's reply is "Oh."

She remembers absolutely _hating _that book when they had to read it for sophomore English. She makes a mental note to read it again, and is terribly concerned that it might be useless to make mental notes of any kind – it might be useless to try to remember any of Quinn's answers anyway – she is quite drunk, after all, there's no point denying it. It's lucky she didn't start trying to play spin the bottle in the restaurant. She asks Quinn if she has a pen and Quinn just frowns.

So she says "Never mind," and "I like Oliver Twist," quietly, entreatingly. She's moisturizing her hands. Many people find this part of her nightly ritual to be excessive and/or unnecessary, but Rachel is adamant: It's true that you never see the hands close-up on stage, but these days what with all the audio-visual equipment that is often –

She misses Quinn's reply. It's a soft, wicked tease: "You like the musical, philistine."

Quinn's laughing. Rachel's not sure why, but it sounds awfully smug and a little bit evil. She shoots her several sidelong glances whilst shaking her hands out violently. It seems to make Quinn laugh more.

"Rachel, _what _are you…" she half-asks.

"I don't want to get grease all over everything," Rachel says, rolling her eyes, because if Quinn took proper care of her hands, she would know this, and she should, because her skin is fine and her fingers are long, and Rachel has always thought she could probably be a hand model if she wanted to, although really why would she want to be a hand model when she's at Yale and has _her face, _and then she snaps – truly – like somebody clapping their hands, "Favorite poem!"

Quinn's still laughing, but suddenly it's an effort. She's not sure exactly what happened and she's not sure exactly why Rachel would ask her such a random question but she suddenly feels naked – really – to the point where she casts a quick glance downward to reassure herself that she didn't start getting changed in the bathroom, in front of Rachel, into nothing.

_No. Fully clothed. All good._

She combs her hair, even though she usually wouldn't. Rachel's fixing a pore strip to her t-zone. It looks like they're going to be a while.

Just as Quinn realizes she probably should have answered ("What? I don't know? I don't read or write poetry? Ever?"), Rachel realizes she shouldn't have asked.

Or at least she shouldn't have asked like _that._

She shouldn't have put the pore strip on either. She wasn't going to, but she decided at the last moment that she ought to be punished. Self-flagellation via late night removal of blackheads. At least it has a functional aspect. At least she'll look fresh and clean in the morning, even if she looks _unbearably stupid right now, _and Quinn is probably only combing her perfectly kempt hair to pass the time with something other than laughing_. _Rachel stares uncomfortably at herself and asks: "Favorite song?"

Quinn puts her comb away and rests her elbow on the ledge. Or she intends to rest her elbow on the ledge. What actually happens is she rests her elbow on nothing and skids toward the wall.

If Rachel wasn't drunk and closing her eyes tightly preparatory to pulling off her pore strip, Quinn would feel like an idiot.

She smiles. Her elbow is right where she wants it, and Rachel is wincing and inspecting her strip doubtfully. "Favorite…" she mutters, with a flourish of her hand, "Song…" with another.

"That's a ridiculous question_,_" Quinn says, shaking her head and zipping her bag up. She glances at Rachel and sees that she's pulling little pots out of hers and lining them up carefully on the ledge.

She smiles and steps back to find a smooth stretch of wall, leans against it. She was just about to ask if she was nearly done.

"Okay, you're right," Rachel says, dabbing who-knows-what onto her _elbows, _"So I'll be more specific." She turns toward Quinn and smiles ingratiatingly. "What's a song that you always wanted to sing in Glee club and now you're sort of secretly bitter that you never did?"

Quinn is taken aback. Her eyebrows shoot up. "That's a good question," she says, before realizing that she's basically admitting to being secretly bitter, and about Glee club, of all things. She sighs. She left all of that behind, didn't she?

Secrets, bitterness… Glee. She left it all behind, altogether. She is sure that she did.

"Well?" Rachel prompts. She's washing whatever-it-was off her elbows. It looks awkward, and Quinn thinks she always hated show and tell when she was a kid.

But she always did it, didn't she? She always walked up there with her props and her palm cards – and she always got a polite round of applause - she always got a gold star.

She steels herself, steps forward, leans over her basin and looks in the mirror, says, "I always wanted to sing _Somewhere Over The Rainbow, _but - "

Rachel _ooohs _an interjection and starts clapping her hands. She hasn't toweled her elbows yet. Little drops of water fly at Quinn's face.

"_But,_" she continues, flicking them off her skin with a fingertip, "Mr Shue sang it with Puck, and after that I figured… what's the point?"

Rachel frowns. "Noooo," she wails. "There's always a point. There was definitely a point, Quinn. You should have sung it! I wish you had. I wish I'd sung it with you. I love that song. Who doesn't? I mean really. We should have sung it together."

All of this comes out in a quick, unbroken stream. Quinn smiles. "Thank you," she says, "But that would probably have made it even more pointless."

Rachel's braiding her hair – or she's trying to. "What?" she asks, "What are you talking about? We're great together."

Her hair tumbles from her hands and her lips make a firm line. She lets her hands fall to her sides, shakes her shoulders out, and then starts again. Quinn holds on tight to the side of the basin, with both hands, watches intently, like you watch a tight-rope walker at a circus.

Silence falls.

By the time Rachel's done, Quinn's forgotten what they were talking about. She honestly has no idea. Put her on the stand and she'd put her hand on the bible and swear she didn't know.

But Rachel hasn't forgotten. She's been ruminating about it the whole time and working hard at formulating a very simple plan. She whips her terry-toweling cat headband off, turns to Quinn, and says, "Do you ever think it's weird that we only sang together once in three whole years?"

Quinn freezes.

_Stop. Police._

She remembers Rachel crying in the street and throwing money all over the place. She smiles. "I guess so," she says, slowly, "I guess you sang a lot of songs with…" She almost says it, _almost, _"…other people. And I guess I didn't really sing a whole lot overall, so…"

She picks up her bag and holds it to her chest.

Rachel has become very still. She's poised to floss says, with the box in one hand and the end of the string in the other. She thinks it's kind of like a little cartoon bomb with a fuse. She says, "Sing it for me now."

Quinn turns to her with the kind of expression she might have on her face if she'd just been asked to assassinate someone. Her eyes are so wide it hurts and her mouth is loose, almost open, ready to say… what?

No?

No, Rachel, I won't sing for you?

Quinn shakes her head, and Rachel says "Please," softly. She drops her floss into the basin like she forgot she was holding it. It makes a loud clinking sound, and she pretends not to notice.

Quinn swallows. It makes a loud clicking sound, and she pretends not to notice too.

Minutes tick by – or it could be seconds – or it could be nothing at all – but Rachel sighs and puts her pots back into her toiletries bag, looking back expectantly after each one. She zips the bag and looks in the mirror – at Quinn – at a Quinn, who is silent and possessed of something like a trembling lip.

Rachel grins. "Quinn Fabray, stop being such a coward," she commands. "You sang in the _street _a half hour ago."

Quinn's brow furrows. She should point out that the street was empty. That is was _one line. _That she wasn't even trying. That Rachel wasn't even ready for it. She swallows instead, and Rachel glares, shakes her shoulders out, looks into her own eyes. "Come on," she says, "It'll be easy. I'll start you off."

She breathes out, then in. (Quinn does too.)

"Somewheeeeeere," she sings, turning Quinn's way as she does, with so many encouraging nods of her head she's like a buoy on the sea.

The sound swells. It bounces off the tiles and rises, and it's not long before it's like it's everywhere. Bathroom acoustics, Quinn thinks, remembering suddenly something she'd almost forgotten. She closes her eyes against her will, opens them quickly.

"You've got to be kidding me," she says, and "No."

The too-big smile is back on her face. Her right knee is quivering.

"Somewheeeeeere," Rachel begins again, with a plaintive tone, and Quinn turns her head quickly to the mirror, thinks, faraway and unbidden: _Forlorn, the very word is like a bell_.

Her mouth drops open. Nothing comes out. Rachel inches around the edge of her basin to stand in between and blocks Quinn's reflection with her face.

"Ooooover the rainbow?" she sings, and her chin is low and her eyelashes are long.

Quinn curses. "Fuck," she says, and she never says that, _never_. She closes her eyes again, and thinks that really, this is the most ridiculous time to feel her resolve crumbling, and really, this is the most ridiculous time to be less than all the brave new things she is.

She opens her eyes on _lullaby. _She blinks. Rachel's face is right where her own should be. If she starts singing along, right now, she'll be less than perfect, because perfect is already here – there – right in front of her – right up in her face - and _skies are blue…_

Something she never told Rachel or anybody in the world ever: the day Mr Schue said she could have the female lead on "Don't Stop Believin'" she smiled toothily and said "Cool," and when she left the choir room she headed straight for the bathroom and cried silently in a stall.

She was _terrified, _and rightly so. When she tried singing the song that night, in the bathroom, with the shower running and the hairdryer on, and only after she'd checked that her mother was on the phone and her father was drunk, she cringed with every note she never quite hit, felt her heart sink at how flimsy she sounded, even with the bathroom acoustics, even with every breath in her body – she was so small, she was so small-town school-girl.

She practiced every night all week but it made no difference – or rather it seemed to make no difference. Quinn knew, on some level, that she must have been better by the end of her exertions than before she started. But the trouble was that the bar was set to Rachel Berry.

She remembers writing in one of her many abandoned journals that it was all Rachel's fault – and, without a trace of irony, that everything was wrong, and _everything, _underlined, was _all, _underlined, _Rachel, _underlined. She remembers chronicling wistfully her life B.R. – yes, before Rachel – when everything had been effortless and obvious – when she had been able to delude herself that she was special, because she didn't know what special really was yet.

When you're blonde and pretty and quite clever and rather talented and you know how to be polite when you need to be, you can get away with anything. You can even get the lead vocal when there's a girl who's better than you – much better – better in too many big, bright ways.

Quinn was at the top of the pyramid back then.

But she knew: Rachel never needed a leg-up. She never needed to fall back on anyone. Because Rachel, on her own, with nothing but the breath in her body, was capable of perfection.

She _is _capable of perfection.

Quinn smiles. She closes her eyes. All of this has flashed through her mind in a matter of seconds, as though each individual thought had a fraction of a feeling that wholly represented it.

She knows that if she sings now she won't be perfect. And she knows that she'll regret it tomorrow. But she also knows that if she _doesn't_ sing, she'll regret it tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and certainly until the next time she sees Rachel, and maybe till the very end of days.

She opens her eyes and her mouth, and sings "Someday I'll wish upon a star…"

She's all alone. Rachel saw her coming and fell silent. She's smiling and covering her mouth about it, and Quinn almost laughs and ruins "troubles melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops…" She breathes in quickly. "That's where you'll find me…"

Rachel falls back into the song somewhere along the way, an octave higher, and gloriously soft. Like snow, Quinn thinks, and she closes her eyes and remembers the lake and the earmuffs she doesn't own a pair of yet.

It seems like it's over so fast. She can't remember if they sang all the verses, but she is sure that they must have, because Rachel seems satisfied.

She's looking at her, solemn, bright eyed, leaning forward just a little like she expects her to say something. Only Quinn can't think of anything to say. She can only hear the refrain in her head, over and over, as though it was still bouncing off the tiles: _Why oh why can't I?_

After a moment Rachel picks up her toiletries bag, slides around the basin and folds her arms. She smiles. It's a _big _smile. And she says, "I always thought Mr Schue's version lacked subtlety."

Quinn laughs. She's not sure what she can say. Of course, she wants to object. She's not _subtle. _She's just not _strong. _But she can't say that didn't feel good. She can't say it didn't _sound _good, that is. Anything that's half Rachel is better than –

The bathroom door opens aggressively and they're joined by a girl in very creased pajamas. "It's after midnight," she says curtly. "We can hear you down the hallway."

"Oooh," Rachel exclaims. She sounds pleased. Quinn thinks she might be about to ask this angry sleep-deprived student what she thought of their duet and her foot scoots out and taps hers.

"Sorry," she says, "I didn't realize it was so…"

The door is shut before the end of her sentence, and she and Rachel burst into laughter that is at first loud, then silent, then peppered with exaggerated _Shh's._

* * *

The walk to Quinn's room is brisk and breathless, but that still doesn't account for how the two of them seem to have arrived without any time passing.

They both have this thought, exactly: _What just happened? _And then Quinn thinks she should drink two glasses of water and take an advil and Rachel wonders whether time travel will be possible someday and if that will make it easier to get around in Manhattan or if there will just be lots of different versions of people everywhere and it will end up being more trouble than it's worth.

_Experiments are dangerous: _they both have that thought too, though for entirely different reasons.

Rachel opens the door when they've been standing outside it for a good 10 seconds of time they can't feel passing. She throws herself straight at her pile of blankets, rolls over when Quinn closes the door, sits up, says with a frown "What happened to your bed?"

"Long story," Quinn says. She smirks, stumbles, smiles. "You had to be there."

Rachel rolls her eyes and throws herself at her little pink case, pulls her white nightie out. She grabs hold of the bottom of her shirt and pulls it over her head, and Quinn stumbles again, wrenches her closet door open and ducks behind it.

She thinks she's waited long enough when she peeks around the edge, but of course, _of course - _she chastises herself - she has absolutely no concept of time.

That's why Rachel is naked from the waist up, and, thank god, her back is to Quinn, and Quinn thinks that since she's not seeing anything more than she might see if Rachel were wearing, say, a backless dress at prom – except she never did, she may as well keep looking – that is to say she may as well tip-toe around the closet door in search of her own pajamas.

She doesn't move though. Not until Rachel's tugging her skirt off under the nightie and saying "Quinn what happened to your bed?"

Quinn just shakes her head. She's found her pajamas and is back behind her door. She's tugging the bottoms on and it's taking an awfully long time, which she eventually realizes is down to the fact that she has her shoes and her pantyhose on.

Rachel is pointing and laughing and that's when Quinn realizes she's knocked the door open in her struggles. "What?" she gasps, miserably, and she falls to her knees. At least the top got on safely at some point.

She sighs, and suddenly Rachel is crawling over towards her, still laughing and trying to point even though she needs her hands for the crawling, and then she's grabbing hold of the pajama bottoms and yanking them off saying "Here, here, it's okay," and a whole lot of other words to that effect.

Quinn blinks and rests on her palms. She can't believe she's letting Rachel take her pants off. She can't believe Rachel hasn't gotten them off yet. It's been at least ten minutes since she started she thinks, hotly, even though she knows that isn't right.

Rachel's abandoned the pants. They're bunched at Quinn's ankles in a stripey mess, and Rachel's bent over her shoes and giggling. She pulls them off one by one, says "You're lucky you're wearing pumps, you know," and giggles some more. And then she's tugging at the toes of her pantyhose and saying "I don't see why I should do _all _the work, Quinn," and Quinn says "Sorry?" like she missed something, even though she didn't.

She gets up and shuffles behind her closet door. It's okay. Her skirt was still on. There's nothing to be worried about.

Rachel is laughing on the carpet. She's rolled over onto her back and is tapping her toes and her fists on the ground like the cartoon that she is. Finally she sighs, presses her hand to her chest, and says "_I _managed to undress and dress myself, Quinn. I can't believe you're drunker than me."

Quinn puts her head around the door, even though she's done and she knows she could just come out already. "I feel like it's just kicking in now," she says, then, with a smile, "I'm a little scared."

"You don't have to be scared," Rachel says, too loudly, then, soft, as she crawls over to her pile of blankets, "I won't laugh at you."

There's a long moment. Quinn is absolutely sure of this. Time passes. A lot of it. And she feels every tick of the second hand. They are both still, and Quinn is standing straight and not holding onto a single thing, even though she feels like she might be sitting down slowly, slowly... She's surprised when she shakes her head at the end of the long moment, and realizes she's still on her feet. She says, without choking at all, "Oh please, you've been laughing at me all night."

Rachel blushes – or Quinn thinks she might be blushing– she's covered her cheeks with her hands and she's smiling at her pillow. "No, I _haven't,_" she says, and the tone of her voice says she knows that she has.

Except she doesn't. Not really. Rachel doesn't know a whole lot about this whole evening. Rachel doesn't know a whole lot about anything at all right now.

She's under the covers now. She's smoothing her pillow. She's placing the second one neatly at the head of Quinn's mattress, leaning over and smoothing it too.

Quinn thinks she should probably pick the mattress up and put it back on the bedframe. She thinks that would be the sensible thing to do. She should pick the mattress up and put it on the frame. She should put her phone on to charge. She should drink the water and take the advil. She should say goodnight. She should go to sleep.

She flicks the light off and edges toward the mattress in pitch darkness. Then she flops down onto it with a groan that makes Rachel giggle.

Quinn giggles too. And then, when they've both stopped, she pulls her blanket over herself and asks: "What do you want to do tomorrow?"

"Oh…" Rachel pauses. She considers not answering. She could just pretend she's already falling asleep, couldn't she?

The problem is that she's just remembered that she resolved quite seriously on the bus on the way home tonight that she would go home early tomorrow to prepare for her performance Monday. She remembers telling herself yes, thank you, she _was _the top, and it was too far to fall not to find the _perfect _song, not to perfect it in ways even she would usually deem a little neurotic, not to know every note of something new like it was the kind of friend whose birthday you never forget. It was too far to fall not to be rested and ready to go.

She remembers thinking she would get the 10:15 train "come hell or high water". She reminds herself that she never uses that phrase unless she really, really means it. She fidgets uncomfortably, laughs for no good reason, and that means she can't pretend she's asleep. So she decides to just pretend she's forgotten her resolution instead.

She'll remember in the morning. And she'll tell Quinn. And Quinn won't be annoyed, will she? Because she has things to do, doesn't she? Because she kind of barged in on her weekend anyway, right?

Rachel smiles and decides not to ask herself any more questions. For now she will just pretend. For now she will just say: "Let's go boating. I need to get my sea legs."

Quinn smiles back. "I don't have a boat, Rachel."

"But you will!" Rachel says, as though the point in the future at which this will happen could easily be tomorrow morning. "You'll be one of those celebrity attorneys who goes on Dr Phil," she says, with a yawn. "As if you wouldn't have a boat." She yawns again. "Unless you're the President. Then you'd have a private jet, right?"

She asks like she's checking. Like Quinn can call her future and confirm. Quinn doesn't. She doesn't want to call her future right now, except insofar as her future involves the next day. "We could go to the lake," she says lightly, like she might suggest they order take-out.

Rachel mumbles "Mmhmm," in a non-committal kind of way.

Quinn bites her lip. "Joe's having people over…" she suggests.

Rachel closes her eyes and opens them, like a blink in slow motion. Quinn's starting to be able to make out her features as her eyes adjust to the low light. She looks sleepy. And happy. She slow-motion-blinks again, asks: "Isn't the lake better though?"

Quinn thinks. Or she seems to be thinking. She might be thinking. After a few moments she says, "No, Joe's is better." She smiles, widely, so Rachel will see. "His friend has a karaoke machine in his dorm."

"_Excellent,_" Rachel says. "They're both better then."

Quinn shakes her head slowly. "They can't both be better," she says. "Things can't be reciprocally… better."

"Of course not, of course not," Rachel says, and Quinn isn't sure whether she's conceding or teasing her, till her eyes close and she says, "That's love though. You're better and they're better and you're better and they're better. That's how love is. Isn't it?"

When Rachel says that Quinn isn't sure of anything at all, least of all how to answer. She holds onto her pillow. She wants to say _I wouldn't know, _but she thinks it would sound a little petulant, and maybe it's not even true.

She _doesn't _know, of course. But maybe she _would _know.

She frowns and closes her eyes too, only tightly, like you shut a door. "Right," she says as dryly as she can manage. "What's _your _favorite poem then, Rachel?"

"Ha!" Rachel says. She opens her eyes all of a sudden and wriggles violently, completely rearranging the blankets underneath her and turning her pillow over twice. "Sorry," she says, as she settles down again.

There's a long pause in which they both have their eyes closed and are breathing deeply. Just as Quinn is penciling her body in for sleep Rachel opens her eyes again and says "Hey, you know what'd be cute on you?"

Quinn opens her eyes too. Her brow furrows and she's suddenly as awake as if she was riding a bicycle or a tricycle or some other kind of cycle or –

Is Rachel Berry giving her fashion advice? Because that would be… weird. "What?" she asks warily. She hasn't owned a pair of mary janes since she was ten. She's not about to start again with them now.

Rachel stares at her for a moment. Quinn peers. Her expression is shadowed. She's staring, that's all that's for sure. Then she stops staring, closes her eyes and pulls her blankets up to her chin. "Yellow bird," she says.

"What?" Quinn asks again, just as warily. Rachel may like to have animals plastered all over any and all clothing she owns but Quinn's not sure she's –

"Look it up," Rachel mutters, and pretty soon it seems like she's asleep or at least looking to be.

Quinn rolls onto her back and draws her knees up. She scrunches the sheet on her mattress up in her toes. She wants to look it up right now. She will never be able to get to sleep if she doesn't.

_Yellow bird. _

She's suddenly picturing Rachel in a canary yellow pant-suit. There are lapels with rhinestones on them. She's swinging a feather boa like a lasso. Quinn frowns and grins at the same time, covers her mouth and sits up slowly. Her phone is dead because she didn't put it on to charge. Her laptop is all the way over on her desk. She'll have to wait till Rachel is definitely asleep and then creep over there and dim the screen quickly. Or maybe she can take the laptop into the closet. Or under the covers.

She lies back down, turns her head and watches Rachel. She leans in till her face is barely resting on her mattress. She listens. She tries to work out how deeply she's breathing and what level of unconsciousness it might correspond to. She counts _in two three four, out two three four, in two three four, out two three four, in two three, four, out two three -_

It takes her that long to stop counting and start breathing in Rachel's footsteps. Following in her breathsteps. Whatever.

Within minutes they are both fast asleep.


	12. Chapter 12

Quinn wakes up the next morning worried about the night before. Even before she opens her eyes she feels it: the rising panic as memories flood back to her in unsettlingly non-linear fashion. Dollar bills. Frank and Audrey. Mushrooms. Her drunk dad. _Bisexuality doesn't exist_. Haikus. The cab she didn't hail. _Turkey._

Quinn panics. She squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn't remember eating turkey. She doesn't remember the things she said to Rachel at the bus-stop. She doesn't remember whether she hit the wrong notes in_ Over The Rainbow. _

She does remember Rachel talking about love. She does remember Rachel asking about poems. She doesn't remember talking about either of those things herself, but that doesn't mean that she didn't.

She could have said anything. Anything at all. About… anything.

And Rachel might be an easier drunk than she is, but the fact remains that she was all right in the end – she got her clothes off and on – in a timely fashion – without needing any help about it.

Quinn opens her eyes. She can't help it. There comes a point where if you're awake and you haven't opened your eyes yet you start to feel like you're being buried alive.

Or maybe she just feels like she's being buried alive just because – because maybe that's exactly how she's felt before – because that's exactly how she felt the morning she woke up naked, and Puck wasn't there but his underwear was, and she wouldn't find out for weeks but Beth had already begun to exist inside of her.

Her life had changed that morning - whether she knew it or not – completely and forever.

The ceiling is bright white. There's a lot of light in the room and she's pretty sure she can hear birds singing outside. She forces herself to turn her head to the side and her eye catches the clock. It's ten past eight.

She blinks, looks down. Rachel's not in her bed. But then, neither is she, not officially. She glances at her empty bed frame, rolls over quickly and buries her face in her pillow.

It's a while before she realizes she is not going to be able to just go back to sleep. She rolls over and sits up slowly, brushes her hair out of her eyes and waits while they adjust to the daylight. When they do she sees that Rachel is slumped face-down on the carpet, snoring, her hand curling reflexively around one of her little pink dumbbells.

Quinn smiles. That's better. She feels better. She feels perfectly all right, actually. In a moment she'll get up and pick out a vigorous morning song and Rachel will jump up and commence lunging and everything will be the way it's supposed to be – the way it was yesterday – the way it will always be – no matter what she says – no matter what she does.

She's panicking again and she doesn't know why – and that's exactly the problem. What she does know: she desperately needs to go to the bathroom and she desperately needs a glass of water.

She also needs to brush her teeth as soon as possible.

She gets up, which, given that the bed is a mattress on the floor, really just involves standing. And then she tip-toes around Rachel's sprawled, sleeping form, grabs her toiletries, and a change of underwear, and sneaks out of the room.

* * *

When she comes back Rachel is not asleep and she is not lunging either. She's in her nightie and her clothes are over her arm and her toiletries bag is in her hand and her case is packed and at the door.

Quinn perceives all of this before either of them can say good morning, so she says "You're going home," softly instead, and she hates the way it sounds.

She really _hates _the way it sounds.

So does Rachel. She grimaces. She says "Yeah, I didn't say last night?" and she knows she looks guilty because she feels guilty, and she always looks the way she feels, especially when she's trying not to.

And it's not _just _that she feels guilty. She also feels sort of mad at herself. She had hoped that since she rarely drank and therefore easily became intoxicated, she would have forgotten all about the promise she made to herself last night about going home. In fact, she had decided in those slim minutes before sleep took her over that she _would _forget – she had willed it. But then, of course, she'd started worrying she would forget everything else along with it, and so she clutched at the memories, all of them, and in the morning she knew that she and Quinn had been out to dinner, she knew that Quinn had paid, she knew that she had sung to her, twice, she knew that she had had trouble getting her pants off – or on – the details are unclear there – she knew a _lot _of other things she would think about carefully on Monday night after dinner, and she also knew that she had to go back to NYADA or suffer consequences she was not prepared to suffer.

Quinn is silent.

"I didn't… say?" Rachel repeats awkwardly.

"No," Quinn says finally. "I mean, I don't remember. Maybe. Maybe you did." She drops her bag and walks over to the bed, sits down, remembers it's just a frame when it hits her hard in the ass.

"Ouch," she says to herself, and Rachel grimaces again.

"I'm so sorry!" she says, "I should have said – I just forgot – or I didn't want to think about it. Because I'm so stressed out, you know? I have this performance on Monday and it has to be perfect. I mean it has to be _more perfect _than just _perfect. _And I haven't even picked a song and I missed my exercises and now I think I sound kind of nasal. Do you hear that?" she asks, her voice rising with anxiety, "Do you hear a nasal quality to my voice?"

Quinn shakes her head, and smiles when Rachel starts singing _Mi, mi, mi, mi, mi! _with a look of abject horror on her face.

"You sound fine," Quinn says, "And it's fine. I mean I'm fine. I have a lot of reading to do actually, so it's, you know, fine, Rachel." She breathes in and looks out the window. It's a _beautiful day, _and she can't help wishing it had been beautiful yesterday. Then they could have gone to the lake. Except maybe Rachel doesn't want to go to the lake. Maybe Rachel doesn't really like lakes. Or Joe. Or sorbet. Or New Haven. Or -

She shakes her head and makes herself smile. She's being an idiot. If it was her first big assessment she would have been making Rachel sit quietly in the corner all weekend while she studied. She understands. She does. She just feels… like she's being buried alive?

"Do you want to eat anything before you go?" she asks brightly. "What time's your train?"

"Sure," Rachel says distractedly. She's put her bag and her clothes down and is folding up the blankets she slept on and shaking each one out furiously as she goes. "Yeah, Rice Krispies would be sublime," she says, and again, distractedly, "_Sublime…_ I just… I just need to…"

She frowns when she's folded the last blanket. She pulls the case off the pillow and folds that too. She looks around the room and then shrugs like you shake yourself. She grabs her bag and her clothes again and smiles quickly at Quinn. "Just give me a second, okay?"

She rushes out the door and down the corridor, opens the bathroom door, barricades herself in a stall and starts crying.

When Rachel comes back her eyes are puffy and red and she is _definitely _nasal now, and Quinn can't pretend not to notice. She doesn't sound fine and she doesn't look fine and they are burying Quinn alive again and she doesn't know what to do.

"Are you okay?" she asks weakly.

Rachel nods and smiles, just as weakly, and then, abruptly, she gives up – she gives in – she doesn't care anymore – and she thinks that if Quinn doesn't think she's pathetic yet chances are she never will. So she wails "Nooooo!" and throws herself into her arms.

"What is it?" Quinn asks, laughing despite herself as she pats her on the back in what she hopes is a comforting way. "Rachel how has there been a crisis between here and the bathroom? What's going on?"

Rachel pulls back and shakes her head. "It's not a crisis," she says. "I just… I already feel really weird and nervous." She looks up quickly and dabs at her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan. "About the assessment I mean. And I just…" She sighs, covers her face with her hands and says "You're going to laugh."

Quinn does laugh – before she can realize how inappropriate that reaction is – and Rachel looks up with her patented comedy glare.

"Rachel," Quinn says, and "Come on." She takes her elbow and sits her down on the bed she has restored to its frame. "What is it? Just tell me."

Rachel looks down at her hands and then up at Quinn. "It's nothing," she says, and then, again, shamelessly wailing, "I lost my cliiiiip."

"What?" Quinn asks, puzzled. "What clip?"

Rachel sighs. "My little silver clip with the little star on it. I had it in my hair last night and now it's just gone and I think I might have taken it out at the restaurant but I can't remember. And I just feel like…" She sighs heavily. "I feel like it's an omen, Quinn. Because it was a _star _and I _lost _it and I feel like suddenly everything is going _wrong_."

"Ah," Quinn says, and "I see," and she flushes, she thinks she sounds like a doctor or something.

Rachel smiles sadly. "I mean, I'm not an idiot, you know? It wasn't valuable, not really. Normally I'd just let it go – and I mean, I _definitely _wouldn't be crying in the toilets about it, I _swear._" She shoots Quinn a serious look as if to say _Believe I am a sane person._

Quinn nods soothingly. "It's just because you're stressed out about everything," she says, and "That's all it is," and strangely, the moment she says those things out loud, she feels much better than she did before.

She is not being buried alive.

"I get it," she says, patting Rachel's shoulder neatly. "But it's okay. We can skip breakfast, you know. We'll go to the restaurant instead." She nudges her, again neatly, says, "I bet that bitchy waitress tried to steal it or something. We'll bust her."

Rachel smiles, gets up after Quinn and follows her to the door. Then she frowns. "I thought the waitress was lovely," she says.

* * *

They take the same bus with a different driver – it's the exact same bus, Rachel notes, "See the gum on the window in the shape of a heart?" - and there are a lot more people on it – too many for them to sit together, and so they stand. Rachel holds onto the grip above with both hands, and Quinn smiles and promises her they're not going over any rough terrain.

Rachel smiles too, and looks confused. She clings tightly to the grip until they get to their stop.

They walk the exact same path as they did the night before, and Rachel looks around as though everything is very new and says "There's so much stuff."

Quinn frowns. "What do you mean 'stuff'?" she asks.

Rachel shrugs. "Shops and benches and trees and trash cans…" She trails off and glances up at Quinn with the exact same blushed apology as last night, when she called her on laughing at her – only this time her hands aren't covering her face.

Quinn looks for a change in the color of her skin, and on the one hand she thinks it's a smooth, strong color she can only call 'Rachel', through and through, and then at the same time she imagines she sees a pinkish tinge flaring across her cheeks. She must. After all, she thinks, if it's not there, how did she know Rachel was blushing in the first place?

How did she know last night when her hands were on her face?

"Yeah," she says gently, "we have some really nice trash cans here in New Haven."

Rachel rolls her eyes good-naturedly. "Last night it was so dark," she explains, "It seemed like a backdrop." She shakes her head and folds her arms and smiles. "Like it wasn't real – I don't know – I don't know what I'm saying – I couldn't see much – your trash cans are quite nice, by the way." She pauses to observe one, head cocked to one side in what Quinn hopes is mock contemplation.

It is. Rachel feels flustered suddenly. She's sure it's not any colder this morning than it was last night, and she has her coat on _and _her hat and a little scarf that doesn't go with either round her neck. And yet she feels exposed and prone to shivering. She coughs, for something to do. Maybe she's getting sick, she thinks – for something to think – and it's the stupidest thing she could contemplate because oh God she is _not _getting sick, she can_not _be _getting sick._

Quinn jolts her away from the panic stations when she says they're nearly there, and then, too many quick steps to match her long strides later, they're standing outside Harvest, side by side.

It's closed.

Rachel says, "Oh," and she sounds so disappointed that Quinn crosses the street at a run and peers through the closed shutters uselessly.

When she turns back Rachel is right behind her and about to say how it doesn't matter when Quinn pulls out her phone. "I'll call them," she says, "Maybe someone's out back."

Rachel says it's okay, she doesn't need to do that, it's no big deal, really, it was only cubic zirconia, her dads gave her her grandmother's diamonds for her eighteenth birthday but she's not allowed to wear them beyond the front gate of their house, or without one or the other of them present, she could probably buy another one, she'll look online, there are probably nicer ones, even, it's just that she bought that one the day before Senior year started, and maybe it was supposed to be a metaphor, and does Quinn remember the dress she wore at –

"Hello, this is Ms Fabray," Quinn says, holding a hand up at Rachel. "I dined at your restaurant last night with a friend, and she seems to have lost a diamond hair clip there. I'd appreciate it if you could get back to me as a matter of urgency."

She leaves her number, and says thank you in a brisk, business-like way, and then when she ends the call her face crumples a little. "I had to leave a voicemail," she says, uneasily. "Their message said they don't open again until Tuesday at eleven."

Rachel smiles brightly, so brightly that Quinn thinks maybe she really doesn't mind. "It's okay!" she says, "I mean if they don't have it that's okay. And then, you know, if they do have it, you could just get it for me and bring it home to Lima at Thanksgiving _or –_" her eyes widen and she smiles even brighter, somehow – "you could just bring it to New York when you come!"

Quinn frowns and smiles at the same time, starts to reply, coughs instead, says, awkwardly, "Thank you," and she cringes – she has no idea why she's making such a big deal the invitation. It's only fitting that Rachel should return the hospitality she'd shown her. It's only sensible that Quinn should take a trip to New York City, being so close and having bought the rail pass already.

She shakes her head, and then more vigorously when Rachel says, "I mean only if you're in the neighborhood, you know. Otherwise I can just - "

"I'll be in the neighborhood, Rachel," Quinn interjects, like she's being ridiculous. Except actually she probably won't be in the neighborhood. She's been off campus exactly five times since she settled in at Yale, and two of those have been trips to the lake (alone).

But she should get out more, she thinks. She looks up at the faded yellow façade of Harvest and thinks _I will make Joe take me back to this restaurant, and he can order the wine and I'll pay, and I'll get the tagliatelle with mushrooms and the fruit soup and I'll - _

She closes her eyes and starts walking at the same time. It's a bad idea. She's an extraordinarily coordinated girl, but she knows she's never been able to do much blindfolded.

She opens her eyes like a sane person, and walks slowly, with the slow, heavy kind of smile on her face that comes after tears.

That's what Rachel thinks her smile looks like, anyway. And she thinks it's strange, given that she's the one who's been crying. She pauses, considers what to say next. And then she says, "When you come to New York…"

The rest of her sentence is a fantasy that carries them both back to the bus.

* * *

The bus carries them to the train. It seems that way, even though they stop back at the dorm to get Rachel's things, even though they do have time for a cup of coffee at the worst cafeteria at Yale, and Quinn asks for the soy milk again, and Rachel licks sugar off her fingers and says she's a mess and smiles like maybe she's not anymore.

Quinn thinks it feels like the last day of summer camp, the last time her mom let her go. All of a sudden everything meant nothing, and she didn't see the point in helping put the last boards up on the treehouse if she wasn't going to go up in it ever again. She cried angrily by the stream instead and pretended to fish.

Never mind that at the time she had no idea she wouldn't be back next year. Never mind that at the time everybody laughed and said she was such a girl.

The last hour passes in a haze, and by the time the bus is stopping at the station Quinn is wishing she'd let Rachel leave campus alone. She's wishing she'd stayed in her room and pretended to fish – or something.

She smiles, shakes her head, steps out onto the sidewalk and follows the little pink case. It's a good thing Rachel's leaving, she says to herself. It's a good thing Rachel's leaving because she definitely feels another bout of crazy coming on.

_It's just because you're stressed out about everything, _she reminds herself.

She wants to leave. Badly. She wants to hide. And never mind that there are no libraries anywhere around that she knows of, never mind that it's not raining today, never mind that there's nothing you could call a crowd to get lost in, she's still considering it.

_Hang a right, text her and say you couldn't see her, tell her you fell over and skinned your knee, tell her you had your bag snatched, tell her – tell her anything._

Quinn's still laughing at herself. She's still following the pink case. Her hand is in her pocket and when Rachel turns and says she's sorry to run but she has to have a window seat – she hasn't ever not had a window seat in any vehicle since she was born and she's not about to start now, when Rachel turns and smiles and says all of that her hand makes a fist and the contents of that fist dig into her skin.

She shakes her head, tells Rachel it's okay, her legs are so little she could probably keep up at a stroll, and Rachel scoffs and calls out that if it's so easy to catch her why is she so far behind?

Rachel's case is holding her seat with seven minutes to spare, and she comes back out and hugs Quinn tightly and briefly and puts her hands in the pockets of her coat, and Quinn realizes she never took hers out, and squeezes around the object again, shuts her eyes and opens them at the paving. She wonders whether she should leave. Rachel might be worried about her case. New Haven isn't exactly a hub of criminal activity, but you can't trust anyone these days – you just can't – and you'd be stupid to try – you'd be _stupid._

She pulls her hand out of her pocket, and it's balled up and shaking.

She makes small talk. She needs five minutes of it, and she thinks it'll be easy, because once you get Rachel started she doesn't stop. She tells her idly that the New Haven Dramatic Society did a production of My Fair Lady, and –

And it's a lie, but it doesn't matter. Rachel's started and she won't stop, and Quinn grins and steadies her fist and her free hand against her thighs, nods and smiles in all the right places, and she agrees, yes, absolutely, as much as any reasonable person loves Audrey, it is totally unfair that she got that part when Julie Andrews had done such an amazing job in the musical production.

She was right – she actually has to stop Rachel, and she's realized she stopped counting and she's not sure how long she has left, because another train has pulled in beyond and she can't see the clock anymore, so she smiles and says "Hey Rachel," right when Rachel's in the middle of a quick recap of the plot of Funny Face, and Rachel frowns and says "Hey Quinn?"

Quinn shrugs. Her hand is back in her pocket, somehow. She says, "You'd better go find your case."

"Oh!" Rachel says, and she pretty much throws herself at the train, and Quinn laughs and says "Easy," and "Lucky they hadn't closed the doors."

Rachel winces, and crouches down quickly, grabbing at her knee. "Owwwwww," she moans.

She grazed herself – on the stair, Quinn thinks, and she says "Oh," and "Does it hurt?" and "Here," and Rachel's standing up and saying it's okay, and Quinn picks up her hand and opens her palm and empties her frightened fist into it.

Rachel drops it, of course. She hadn't realized Quinn was putting something into her hand, though in retrospect she'll wonder what exactly she thought she might have been doing otherwise.

The tiny metal object drops to the ground and skitters along the platform right to the very edge, and it's a wonder Quinn doesn't hurt herself too when she throws herself to the ground and slams her palm down on the asphalt.

She acted quickly. Saved. All is well, she thinks firmly.

And then she's on her knees and Rachel is saying "Quinn?" in a worried kind of way, and "Did you drop something?" and Quinn's fingers are fists again, she's breathing hard into the dark, dangerous space between the end of the quay and the start of the train, and Rachel says "Oh my god, Quinn, are you all right? Is it your back? Should I call 911? Do you know CPR because I think I don't remember?!"

When she starts hyperventilating and pulling out her phone and dialing is when Quinn gets to her feet and tells her to stop being ridiculous, even though she thinks spending a full minute on your knees for no good reason is probably ridiculous itself, even though her back does feel strange – and her stomach – and her chest.

She picks up Rachel's hand again with confident exasperation, and places Rufus in her palm, right way up, on his little silver feet. "Here," she says again, "A souvenir."

Rachel looks at her with a confused expression on her face – actually, with the kind of expression she might have on her face if someone told her music wasn't actually that important, though. "Rufus?" she asks, like it's a perfectly good question.

Quinn says, "Yes," and, "I was going to get you a keychain with 'New Haven' on it, but they were fresh out," She stumbles, sighs, puts on a wry smile, "at all the places we didn't go."

Rachel's closed her palm and taken her hand away. It's resting against her neck, just under her chin. "Rufus is much better than a keychain," she says quietly. And she _means _it. "But I don't want to – "

Quinn nods, interrupting. "It's all good, Rachel," she says, again with the confident exasperation she's so good at. "Half the pieces were missing anyway, and I donated a twenty into the kitty for a new set, so…"

She stops talking when she realizes that's probably worse than if she'd just stolen it for her. She remembers Rachel's face last night, through the kind haze of alcohol. The moment when she threw the money back at her laughingly, and Rachel looked up and said you're not _taking it. _

Quinn knows she might be embellishing. She might be coloring the memory. But she could swear that for a moment Rachel had looked… what? Worried? Embarrassed?

_Afraid?_

Regardless, that's exactly how Quinn feels when there's too much time left and she doesn't know whether to hug Rachel again or set her off about Julie Andrews or prise Rufus out of her hand or run away and text her later and say her bag was snatched.

She thinks all of this when it's too late – when Rachel is already hugging her again, hard this time, and for too long, and she's saying things up close against her cheek that she can't hear – things like "You're so sweet," and "I wish I didn't have to go already," and "Come to New York," and "How did you _know?_" and "I almost wanted to steal him myself."

And then she's pulling back and smiling sheepishly and telling her about this one time she stole a dollar bill from this girl's Monopoly set, and Quinn has to stop her – again – because she's already told this story, and Quinn really doesn't mind but the quay is emptying and there's an ominous beeping sound coming from the door.

"Oh!" Rachel exclaims when Quinn says her name, and she rushes onto the train.

The doors close before she can say goodbye, and Quinn turns around on purpose, just in case she decides to wave.

* * *

Rachel can't believe she's crying on a train again. This is the fourth time in as many months if you count the subway (nobody offered her a tissue, she was trying to keep her miserable head above water in a thick sea of hostile faces; one woman told her if she dripped onto her cashmere she'd be paying for it.)

She sighs, splays her palm against the window to check that the ring is really gone. She's not sure why, exactly, but she thought she was past this. She actually had the audacity to think she was over being this sniveling wreck - even though she's well aware that she's been a sniveling wreck at several points throughout this very supposed-to-be-snivel-free weekend.

She peels her palm away from the window and wipes under her eyes. She wouldn't usually put on makeup for a train ride, but this morning when Quinn was leaning over the little mirror on her desk under the green lamp and painting the neatest lines in history along her eyelids, above and below the widest, not-quite-exactly-green eyes in history, Rachel felt the need to… to what? To compete?

She's not sure why she thought she was past that too.

She sighs again, examines her fingers and finds mild smudging. She looks around the carriage and sees that it is empty.

_Nobody to be embarrassed about, _she thinks, smiling sadly, and then, frowning sadly, _nobody to be my mirror._

She tries looking in the window but the sunlight obscures her features. She's a useless glimmering blob. She coughs angrily, wipes her nose, reaches into the pocket of her coat and pulls out her phone, takes a photo of herself.

Rachel looks… she doesn't know how she looks. Her eyes are fine. Or the skin around them is fine. But the expression on her face is strange. Strange in the way where she doesn't recognize it – in the way where maybe she doesn't recognize herself at all.

She feels very alone and very frightened, and suddenly she wishes the cabin were full of people, because it would be less upsetting to be making a scene than to be sitting here by herself taking photos she can't see herself in and crying over things she doesn't understand.

She feels another tear roll down her cheek and stems it with the pad of her thumb.

She's done. She's stopping.

Excessive crying wreaks havoc with the sinuses, and havoc in the sinuses can jeopardize one's chances of making the most glorious music anybody at NYADA has ever heard tomorrow morning.

Rachel is not going to cry at all for the next six months. Come hell or high water. Not even if her performance tomorrow is a total disaster.

She smiles. That last part is kind of an empty vow. Because she is sure, all of a sudden, that it won't be.

She puts her hand into her pocket and holds onto Rufus. She's tempted to get him out, because the company of inanimate animals is better than no company at all. But there are too many ways she could lose him, she thinks. She squeezes her hand tightly around him and thinks that _that _would definitely be an omen.

* * *

Quinn walks into the light of day. The sun is out in fullness. It was like this the day she arrived in New Haven, she thinks; bright and alive – beginning.

Maybe that's why it feels like the beginning again, all of a sudden. Quinn walks over to the furthest bench outside the station and sits down under the bare shade of a newborn tree, and she thinks _I have never sat on this bench, _she thinks _I have never sat on any of these benches, _and she feels like a stranger, she feels like she has just stepped off a train instead of putting Rachel on one.

Her chest is rising and falling at an alarming rate. People walk past with incessant regularity, and every time she gets that same feeling: loneliness, isolation, a sense of not-quite-being. Quinn feels as if she could tell these passers-by everything she knows about herself and they still wouldn't have a clue who she was.

She's terrified, she realizes. And terribly sad.

She reaches into her bag and pulls out her sunglasses, covers her eyes just in time.


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Note:** Hi guys! New chapter, coming through. You might want to check out the image for this story, which seems to have changed :O

* * *

The first thing Quinn does when she gets home from the station is throw herself at her laptop and type _Yellow Bird _into google. She's expecting it to be a song by now; her fashion advice fever dreams have dissipated and she smiles ruefully at her image of Rachel with the feather boa, wanting to convert her to the way of the pantsuit.

_Fade far away, dissolve and quite forget, _she thinks idly, as she clicks on the first youtube link.

Three tubby old men in suits are wiggling around and harmonizing, and she thinks, with a huge smile all of a sudden and a hand on one cheek, _She was right. This is cute, _and then, she thinks, _This would be cute on me._

She swallows, clears her throat, shakes her shoulders out and stands. This is the fifth time through, and she thinks she's ready to try singing along.

She lets the first _Yeeeeeeeellow bird _go, and comes in on "Up high in banana tree," and compared with the lush harmonies in the track, her voice sounds lonely and thin. She begins immediately to worry that "tremulous alto" is really just code for "flimsy rangeless whine," to the point where she misses _Did your lady-friend leave your nest again… _joins in haltingly for "You can fly away, in the sky away…" and loses the part where someone else is luckier than her altogether.

She sighs heavily, lets the rest go without even trying. Rachel probably thinks this one is easy. She makes a mental note never ever to let herself be pressured into singing it.

She does like it though. She really likes it. She'd like to hear Rachel sing it, she thinks. She'd be on one of those cheesy fake 1960's Tropicana sets. In a coconut bikini. And she'd be singing up to this little puppet bird that flitted around clumsily in paper trees.

Quinn smiles. She flops down onto the pile of folded blankets Rachel has left behind and rolls onto her back. She closes her eyes. She can see it now. She can _almost _hear it.

The song has stopped. She opens her eyes and sings sorrowfully into the silence: "You can fly away…"

* * *

Monday is okay, Quinn thinks. Monday is fine. She tries to remember whether Rachel told her what time her performance would be. She thinks she didn't. She thinks she would have remembered. Every so often she looks at her watch or her phone or a clock in a class and wonders what she's singing and whether she's singing it right now.

At lunch she goes to the worst café at Yale on purpose and sits alone and eats bacon and wonders whether she'll text Rachel tonight to see how it went, and just as she's wondering, her phone buzzes, and it transpires that Rachel has texted her.

* * *

Rachel's performance is a knock out. She is sure she was the best; even better than the guy who sang Alfredo's post-traumatic-death ode to Violetta from what is clearly a very important opera called La Traviata. He sounded excellent – terrifyingly excellent, actually – really, even her chair was trembling – she had never heard anything like it before, though she suspects that's just because she was never interested in anything other than musicals and pop as a child, and when her dads took her to see a very important opera singer with a girl's name in concert, she ate too many olives at the cocktail party beforehand, felt sick, and fell asleep.

This boy's name is Nicholas, and he has a stupendously powerful voice, and Rachel is sure that he has won the day, until Thibodeaux offers her feedback afterwards:

"I'm not sure why you bothered getting a blow-up doll to be Violetta if you were going to forget that you're singing a duet with your father altogether. It's not enough to parrot a melody, Nick," she says, sternly, "If you're going to try to wow me with culture, respect the culture. I won't look down on you for hand-waving the harmonies in an Abba song, but…" she frowns, looks around the class and shrugs, "Actually," she says, "it's very possible that I will look down on you if you hand-wave the harmonies in an Abba song."

Nicholas sits down. His cheeks are reddened, but he doesn't seem the least bit irate. He must be one of those meek very talented people, Rachel thinks, and she peers at him curiously.

After her performance, all Thibodeaux does is mutter "Exquisite," under her breath. Well, to be fair, it could have been "Idiot," but Rachel can't see any reason why it would be.

The truth is that she really did sound exquisite. The truth is that sometimes Rachel Berry gives herself goose-bumps when she sings, and this was one of those times. She has won the day. There is no doubt about it, and later she will feel a pang of sadness when she realizes the grades aren't going to be made public.

She looks around the room at all the people who are applauding and whispering to one another after her exquisite performance, and she makes a conscious decision to pull a Nicholas. She ducks her head and smiles, sits down in her seat and looks at her feet.

It feels so unnatural she squirms and grins stupidly and almost starts laughing at one point, and within ten minutes she's sitting bolt upright again, raising her hand eagerly when Thibodeaux asks if anyone knows what the word contrapuntal means to us now as vocalists in the modern world, as we navigate the...

_Contrapuntal!_ Rachel thinks. She knows this one. She's s a full bottle on the baroque. For the past week she's been giving herself a crash course in music history, because her actual music history class is moving way too slowly – they're still knocking sticks together in Australia, for god's sake, and yet everybody seems to know so much more about it all, and she doesn't want to get to the next module and be sitting there dumbly waiting for information to be bestowed upon her.

She wants to be able to nod along, instead of furiously scribbling everything down.

Rachel closes her eyes with her hand in the air, runs over her answer in her head as Thibodeaux finishes the question: _Contrapuntal, as in counterpoint, derived from the latin punctus contra punctum, meaning - _

And then suddenly somebody else is talking, and she could swear she didn't hear Thibodeaux pick anyone yet, but when she opens her eyes there's a brunette with long crossed legs gesticulating all over the place and talking about the interweaving of cultures, and Rachel has no idea what the hell is going on.

Suddenly she feels a hand on her shoulder. The girl next to her is smiling tentatively and guiding her hand down from the air, and Rachel is torn between scowling at her and smiling gratefully, and she thinks maybe what she's doing is both.

After the class the girl says, "Sorry. It just sorta looked like you were stuck. My name's Melanie. You were amazing by the way."

Rachel turns to her and takes a breath in. She's quite taken aback, and in that moment she realizes that not a single person has tried to make friends with her since she's been at NYADA. But then, she realizes, she hasn't tried to make friends with a single person since Leanne judged her efforts excruciating and/or laughable.

First she says "Thank you," then she says "I thought Nicholas was very good also though," she leans in, stage-whispers, "if a little disrespectful to the culture."

She makes a mental note to get a copy of La Traviata and watch it so she can be more specifically authoritative on the subject in future.

Melanie smiles and Rachel hesitates for a moment, then puts her books back down on her chair, holds out her hand. "Hello," she says, "I'm Rachel Berry."

Melanie tucks her books under her arm and shakes her hand. "Nice to meet you," she says.

Rachel can't think of a thing to say after that, and it seems terrible that this momentous occasion is going to be squandered – that she's going to start to make her first friend all of a sudden and stop just as suddenly. She cannot let that happen. She _will _not let that happen.

She runs through a list of possible conversation starters, ranging from "I'm a Show Choir National champion," to "I used to have a fiancé and I still have the ring," to "Quinn Fabray once slapped me in a bathroom," and then she hears somebody behind her talking to somebody else behind her, and repeats what she hears, word for word: "So are you singing next week or the week after?"

She smiles brightly. And Melanie smiles a little more dimly. "I sang in week three, actually," she says. She shrugs. "'Cellblock tango – with Jane and Alice? We thought it'd be cool."

"Ohhhh," says Rachel, like she's remembering. And she is, because this is the girl who –

"We got crucified, huh?" she says good-naturedly. "At least it was memorable," She grins at Rachel's contrite expression, "Sorta."

Rachel smiles as helpfully as she can. "I think she just didn't like the song, you know, maybe because it's so… popular?"

Melanie shakes her head. "I think she didn't like the fact that we did the whole routine with the chairs for a vocal class and I fell over mine twice. Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking. I just… I wanted to make an impression, you know?"

"Right," Rachel says. "Well you did, and that's probably why I didn't recognize you – because today you have so much more clothing on."

Melanie laughs, looks down at her button-down shirt and her jeans. "Right. I am _not _a sexy girl," she says, "I think all I did is prove that for anyone who was wondering."

Rachel smiles broadly, she picks up her books and they walk off together to their next class. "There's nothing wrong with not being sexy," she says. "You know, it's the easiest way to get noticed and the hardest way to get taken seriously. And nine times out of ten, Melanie? A vamp is just a tramp."

Rachel talks at Melanie all the way to Theory. She tells her their dance teacher most definitely is a tramp, and she should never let herself be put down by a woman who thinks wearing nice bras and throwing your hair around is what a millennium of choreographic evolution boils down to. "_I _certainly won't," she says, "No matter how much she dislikes my pastel cat-suits or my 'off-puttingly determined expression'."

Melanie laughs and says one time she tried to do her make-up like Ms July for class and she wound up looking like a sad, sweaty clown by the end.

Rachel says eagerly "Yes! I remember!" and Melanie laughs again.

By the time they get to Theory and sit down together, Rachel thinks she might actually have a friend.

Or at the very least a friendly acquaintance. At the very least she has someone she can sit next to in class if the seat isn't already taken and say hi to when she walks down the halls.

She beams at her textbook and flips it open, and then she yanks her phone out of her bag and starts texting under the table.

_A Case Of You. It was perfect. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

* * *

Quinn drops her bacon and wipes her hands hurriedly. She pulls her earbuds out of her bag and jabs fumblingly at the jack in her phone – it takes her three goes to get them connected. It takes her three goes to get the buds in her ears too. She scrolls quickly through her music until she gets to 'M', selects 'Joni Mitchell' and then 'Blue'.

She knew it. She knew she had this song.

After Rachel did _River _she downloaded the album. She listened to the whole thing a couple of times, in the background, whilst studying, but always wound up coming back to the song she knew, obsessively – she has always been that way, she thinks – so she never really got to know any of the others.

She feels a bolt of excitement go through her body. She selects "A Case Of You".

She closes her eyes. She listens.

* * *

Time passes. Two whole months. Quinn gets her first B minus and complains to the faculty. Her paper gets externally assessed and bumped up to a B plus, but nobody will give her the marker's notes. She suspects her Professor of splitting the difference, because that paper was excellent, that paper was the product of a week and a half's tireless research, that had her leafing through tomes she had _couriered_ from Europe because Yale doesn't even _have _them. There is no way it is a B plus, any more than it was a B minus. She emails the paper to Frannie, who concurs, and suggests she make an appointment with the Dean.

Quinn doesn't. The plan is still to fly under the radar, and if there's one thing she's learned from watching Rachel Berry struggle through high school, it's that people will single you out for knowing your strengths – and not always in a good way.

The time will come to insist; it is not now.

She works hard. She keeps to herself, mostly. She overhears that there's an on-campus production of Manon Lescault scheduled for April, and she's ready to break all her rules and audition until she realizes the production is by the French Club and, you know, in French. She may know how to pronounce Sauvignon Blanc, but that's about as far as her French goes.

She has never read the novel. She had three versions of the ballet on DVD growing up.

This gets her to thinking: what's the point of miraculously being afforded a more or less perfectly functioning spine if she's not going to dance about it?

She won't take any classes on campus, partly because she's flying under the radar and all that, but mostly because at this stage she is severely out of shape. Well, not out of shape. She works out – her guns are important to her after all – but it's a whole different thing to dance than it is to simply be fit. The flexibility, the core strength, the speed and precision, the elevation. All of those things she had in spades once, but she has never really recovered them, not fully, not since before she was pregnant.

She was never really at the top of the pyramid after that. And that's not what she wants to go back to. Cheerleading is like a sport, and if you're not the Captain you're part of a team. Quinn is tired of teamwork. She wants to dance, and be alone with it.

When she goes into New Haven the Tuesday after Rachel leaves to rescue her clip from that waitress' clutches (she had nothing to do with it as it turns out, they found it in the bathroom clipped into a floral arrangement), she takes a scenic route back to the bus. She doesn't know this city as well as she should. She doesn't know it at all and suddenly she realizes that she really wants to.

She ends up spending the better part of an hour wandering through the streets of New Haven, clutching the clip in her hand in her pocket with the same unnecessary ferociousness with which she used to clutch her mother's hand when she was small.

It would be far too ironic to lose it now, she thinks.

She buys a juice that should be freshly squeezed, 100% natural, no addeditives etc, but tastes thin and sugary, and after two or three sips, she thinks how Frannie would march back and demand that they make her another one while she watches – how Rachel would probably do the same, only in a more friendly way.

She smiles and drops the drink undrunk into one of the nice New Haven trash cans, and just as she's deciding it's time to either try on the dress in the window of the store she passed back on Chapel street or go home, she walks past a studio.

A dance studio.

_LINES Ballet Jazz Tap Contemporary _is painted in large slick black letters over a crumbling doorway, and on the door, behind the glass, is a class schedule.

Quinn bites her lip. She's done ballet and jazz and tap in her time, all with varying degrees of appreciation and aptitude. But she has never tried contemporary.

She remembers her mother saying contemporary wasn't for her, those girls just did things that look _ugly, _Quinn didn't want to be _ugly, _did she?

Quinn forgets the dress and goes straight home, clips Rachel's star around some pages in her planner, and writes down on Wednesday the fourth of October _Beginners, 7:45pm._

She goes. It turns out that 'Lines' is a play of words, referring to the line of a dancer, but also being the name of the woman who runs the school. It turns out she doesn't take the ballet, jazz or tap classes anymore, because, as the girl on the desk tells her with wry admiration "those have gotten too boring for her."

Quinn smiles. She's pleased with her choice. She registers as Lucy Fabray, and tells herself it can't be a fake name if, technically speaking, it's your actual name. She doesn't want to be known. She doesn't want to be connected somehow to the girl at Yale who complained about the B minus and secretly covets the lead in Manon.

She enjoys the class. She _really _enjoys it, actually. They don't do any actual dancing for the first twenty five minutes, and she can tell that some of her classmates are frustrated, because as she hears one of them whisper to the other, they "didn't pay for a pilates class", but Quinn is filled with a respect for this woman, because she knows what she wants and she will have it and let the chips fall where they may.

And when they do start dancing… it's like the first breeze after a heatwave. Quinn feels like she's flying. Not literally. In any literal sense she is in a world of pain and struggling to feel anything but extremely awkward. All the movements are new and strange to her and the rhythms defy the conventions of both classical and popular music. She doesn't know what's going on with her body. It is wonderful.

And she's alone. Everybody moves in time, but in their own space. And nobody is watching anybody else, because they're too busy concentrating on what's coming next. Or at least she thinks nobody is watching her; she wouldn't know. She is lost. And it is _wonderful._

She was being watched, of course. Ms Lines was watching everyone like a hawk, and at the end of the class she pulls Quinn aside and says sternly, with what Quinn thinks might be a hint of German accent. "Purch-aze a leotard, miss…what is your name?"

"Quinn," Quinn says, without thinking, and she shrugs.

It seems Ms Lines doesn't check the student register, because she just nods. "Purch-aze a leotard and some tights, Miss Quinn," she says. "I cannot have you coming in here with thesse sloppy joes and thesse sloppy t-shirts."

Quinn frowns, looks around at the other girls who are slipping their sneakers on. No need for them to change into their street clothes, because like her, they are more or less wearing them. She looks back at Ms Lines. "I'm sorry," she says, in a way that sounds more like _Excuse me but… _"Everybody else is dressed exactly like me."

Ms Lines waves a hand. "Everybody ells is everybody ells," she says. "You will purch-aze a leotard and tights." She folds her arms. "Footless."

Quinn frowns again, and says, "Look I really didn't come here to - "

She's about to live out one of her fantasies. Talking back to the ballet mistress. She's about to tell her she didn't come here to be singled out and belittled and bossed around and made to conform. She came here to dance, and that's all, and if that's not acceptable, then she'll find a school where it is acceptable, thank you very much, have a nice day.

Ms Lines interrupts her before she can get anywhere near the good part. "You will come Tuesday eeffnings instead of this class," she says. "You have some training, I can see."

Quinn swallows. It's that kind of singling out. She wants to say she didn't come here for _that _either. The truth is she doesn't want to be good at this. Not right away. She just wants to fly under the radar. She wants to sway in the background like she did back in –

Of course that's not strictly true. She is very flattered. She smiles and says, "I did ballet grow – "

"No, no, not the ballet, the ballet is zooo teeeedious," Ms Lines rebukes, waving her hands around again.

"… and I was captain of the Cheerios at McKinley, Lima, Ohio. We went to a National – "

"No, no," Ms Lines says again, waving her hands around. "I did not say you have experience shaking the pom poms and doing the circus tricks, no, no, no, no," she says, with such an aghast expression on her face she seems to be in physical pain.

"Well, we were of a very high – "

Ms Lines interrupts again – Quinn's beginning to wonder whether she'll ever be able to get a full sentence out around this woman. "I have many Cheerleaders come to me," she says, "Many cheerleaders, and never do they have anything of the _soul._ No, no, no, no, no." She clucks disapprovingly, before finishing with a menacing, "I will not have the cheerleaders in my class."

Quinn is truly confused now. And she's running out of patience. She swings her bag over her shoulder and says, "You know you really shouldn't – "

She's heading to fantasy-land again: You really shouldn't be so closed-minded. Ballet is an incredible art-form, whether you're sick of it or not, and cheerleading takes Olympic levels of strength, endurance, dedication and –

She's not saying any of it, of course, because Ms Lines is talking again – of course. "You will come to Tuesdays," she says. "Intermeedyat," and then she has left the room.

Quinn obeys.

* * *

The rest of the two months is okay. The rest of the two months is fine. Quinn listens to _Blue _a lot, and pays attention during _River _and _A Case Of You._

One night she's at Joe's friend's place off campus drinking beer and feeling sorry for herself, and Rachel starts singing _Suuuuuuuuuurely you touched mine _in her head, and this guy Patrick tells her she's really cool, and she laughs, out loud, she says, "You have no idea who I am," and he says, "Maybe that's _your _problem."

At three in the morning she cries. She tells Joe she feels like a fraud. She tells him she feels like a blight on his life. She tells him she'll never dance again, and he doesn't know what she's talking about, and he says "I don't know what you're talking about," and hugs her, and waits for her to say it's okay, it's fine.

The next day she overhears the blonde waver from Spanish class telling someone she doesn't know that she's a major bitch. Joe hears it too and he says Patrick says the same, she was kind of a jerk to him last night huh, and she nods, and he doesn't ask why. She loves him for it.

She loves Joe, she realizes, with a little smile. She loves him because he is incapable of judgment. Because he asks for nothing. Because he doesn't need to know who she really is to be her friend.

* * *

Quinn goes home for Thanksgiving against her better judgment and it turns out her better judgment was… better.

Lima is the worst. Breadstix is the worst. Everything is the worst, actually.

Mercedes is introducing her to someone named Marley Rose, who blushes and smiles and says "Not really," when Mercedes says she has a hell of a voice, and then she tells her her mom is the lunch lady and it was hard at first, but everyone's been really nice to her, and she has long shiny, droopy hair and the kind of wide blue eyes that Quinn would guess aren't capable of looking anything but sweet. She smiles politely, says she hopes Glee changes her life, moves past her quickly.

Next is Ryder Lyn, who is a tall drink of tepid water, and then there's a girl named Kitty Wilde and Quinn starts to wonder whether these kids are having some kind of competition: who can convince the most people that yes, they really are called that, and next she fully expects to meet somebody called Angelo Heaven or Skate Badass – there's a guy sitting over with Puck who's looking her way and threatening to be called just that.

Only she never gets to him, because this Kitty Wilde, who is introducing herself, is taking a very long time about it. And then when she's done she starts more or less introducing _Quinn _to herself, gushing fervently about her achievements, and about her failures as though they were achievements also, and there comes a point where she's comparing her to one of the Pussycat Dolls and _singing_ about it, and Quinn wrinkles her nose, she tries to laugh in a friendly way when she pulls out a scrapbook that has _pictures of her _in it and asks her to sign it.

"Sure sweetie," she says, with what she knows is unbridled condescension and just a hint of scorn. It's okay though: sweetie seems to enjoy it. She signs the book with a terse _Quinn Fabray, _and Kitty gazes upon it in wonderment and then clutches it to her chest and says she'll never forget her, ever. She's about to explain all the ways she'll never forget when Quinn says, as gently as she can, "Excuse me," and saunters back over to where Mercedes and Mike are sitting.

Thankfully the droopy girl is not with them anymore. But Joe is. Quinn sits down in the booth and hugs him and she fully expects it to be awkward, but it's not, except for the fact that his dreads are pricklier than she remembers. It feels like forever since he was almost a part of her life, and when all he has to say to her is "Hey," and "How's Yale?" she knows everything will be okay.

She does a headcount, not including the newbies: Mercedes, Mike, Joe, that's three, Puck who's in badass corner waving at her every few seconds in a way that seems to indicate he wants her to come over there. Four. Finn, who's deep in conversation with Droops. Five. Then Tina and Brittany and Sam pile into the booth, and Blaine slouches up behind them and pulls up a chair next to her. Artie rolls up. That's makes ten.

_Ten of my friends are here, _she thinks, and she feels terribly alone.

"Where's Sugar?" she asks, like it matters, and Brittany answers dejectedly: "She's in New York."

Tina frowns. "No," she says, "she's on a whirlwind tour of the great mansions of the deep south." She leans over Sam and pats Brittany's hand. "Santana's in New York," she says gently to the assembled company.

Brittany pulls her hand back and folds her arms. "That's what I said," she says flatly. "Santana is in New York waiting tables and stealing hearts."

"Nooooo," Tina says, nudging her kindly, and Artie says a firm "No," too, and then, "I don't think she's waiting tables, it's bar service only where she works."

Brittany stares at the basket of fries in the center of the table. "Well I guess she must be really thankful for that," she says. She leans over and pulls the basket toward her, says, "I'm thankful for hot oil." She cocks her head to one side, considers. "And both male and female genitalia because otherwise there wouldn't be enough babies born and then I would be even more alone than I already am."

"Santana's still in New York, huh," Quinn says, lightly, and she fully expects someone to say, "Yeah, so is Rachel." She fully expects someone to explain to her why she is not here when she could absolutely swear she told her she would be.

But they're all reminiscing about Sectionals, Regionals and Nationals past, completely ignoring her bait.

Soon enough Finn and Puck make their way over and crowd their chairs up around the booth, and she thinks, okay, now someone's definitely going to mention Rachel, but nobody does. By the time the pizzas have come she's decided she'll have to take matters into her own hands. She sighs heavily, then decides she should wait a while before asking, otherwise people might connect the sigh to the question. She munches half-heartedly on a piece of pizza. It's not very good. She drops it onto her plate and wipes her hands crossly on the nearest napkin.

When the others are busy laughing over something that happened to April Rhodes she's not sure she can remember, Quinn leans over the table and asks Finn if he's heard from Rachel.

He blinks guiltily, then says, "Uh… no. Well yeah, I did. But she's kind of mad at me right now." He looks at his piece of pizza, then says quickly, "I'm kind of the reason she's not here, I guess." He wolfs the pizza down and turns his attention pointedly to Sam.

He doesn't want to talk about it. Fortunately for Quinn, Blaine does. "He's kind of the reason Kurt's not here too," he says, behind his hand in a way that makes it completely obvious to everyone that he's talking about it. "They're both mad at him. You know he went AWOL – literally. Nobody knew where he was for a full month."

Quinn supposes she should ask where he turned out to be, but since he's sitting here at Breadstix now looking perfectly alive, she doesn't really see the point. "Oh," she says instead, and, "So Kurt went to be with Rachel?"

"Yeah," Blaine says, dropping his hand, and dropping the fry he was holding. "You know he hasn't even texted me?" he says wretchedly. "Last Thanksgiving we sat up all night eating turkey sandwiches with various condiments and making a quilt of the significant quotes from our relationship." He sighs and smiles fondly. "That's actually how he started writing haikus. Did you know Kurt writes haikus?"

He doesn't stop there, and Quinn thinks she's dangerously close to having one recited at her, so she says, quickly, "He'll be back though, right?" and Blaine answers "Yes," without much certainty.

He looks so miserable and Quinn is almost moved. There must be more to this. She should ask. She should pat his hand or nudge him. She should play that game where she cares.

But she's too busy caring about herself – that's the ugly truth. She feels bored and irritable and sort of… cheated. Rachel did say she would be here. She's sure of it. Or she definitely gave her the impression that she would. And now she's in New York and Sugar's on a whirlwind tour of the great mansions of the deep south, and Quinn could have been on a whirlwind all expenses paid tour of London with her mom if she'd known a night at Breadstix with ten of her friends was all Thanksgiving was going to be.

She glares unreservedly at Finn. She can't help herself. He catches her eye by accident and turns quickly back to Sam.

Blaine's telling her about duet Marley and Ryder did that would have been perfect for him and Kurt – or for him and Tina – or him and anybody, really, and Quinn's nodding and saying what she thinks is "There, there," and staring at the not very good pizza and she is not feeling thankful for much of anything at all.

* * *

Rachel's Thanksgiving is significantly better. She and Kurt spend the holiday in his motel room, and they do each other's nails with each other's polish – hers wind up gunmetal gray and his are the barest shade of pink. They eat taboulle and flatbread and drink too much pop and have a responsible discussion about how irresponsible Finn is, and skirt around the fact that no matter how much of an idiot he's been Rachel still feels like her heart is going to shrivel up and die. Because she'd expected to be with him by now. She'd expected this whole charade of being okay with being apart to be over. She sighs. She wants to cry, but she won't. She hasn't cried once – not when she was scared for his life – not when she found out he was just fine all along – not when he completely failed at offering her an appropriate apology for his behavior.

She promised herself, after all. Six months without tears. Come hell or high water. She's not going to let Finn ruin that too.

Kurt comforts her even though she's pretending she's not really that sad. He braids her hair and makes them tea and serves it in his travel set – it has a cream jug and everything, which is nice even though neither of them takes cream – and he tells her he loves how brave she is. They sing _Bonnie and Clyde _at two in the morning and choreograph a full routine. They talk about Quinn a lot.

Kurt says that at one point. "We're talking about Quinn a lot."

Rachel just smiles.

* * *

Quinn Fabray does not like airplanes.

Everything about this flight is _frustrating. _The movies are all juvenile or have Channing Tatum in them, and she can't hear properly over the sound of the stupid engine anyway, so what's the point? Her bra isn't hooked properly and it digs into her spine every time she sits back in her seat, and every time she inches out of her window seat to go to the bathroom there's a line. The fruit salad is grape and melon.

_Ugh._

When she lands she's so riled up that she refuses to even feel relieved. She stomps through the terminal glaring at everyone, including a small child being reunited with his grandmother. _Especially _the small child being reunited with his grandmother. She swaps her bag from one shoulder to the other and it doesn't hurt any less. And when she gets outside it's raining.

She throws herself into a cab and slams the door, says _Yale, _and not another word. Then she reaches into her bag and pulls out her wallet to check she has cash, finds that yes, as she suspected, there's a wad of twenties in there, clipped together with Rachel's star. She closes the wallet, shoves it back into her bag and pulls out her phone, taps her foot against the door while it takes a whole damn millennium to load up.

She needs to get a new phone. She hates this one. She really, really _hates _this phone.

And yet, when it finally does light up, there's a text and the text is from Rachel and it reads:

'Come to New York this weekend? Please? PLEASE?'

Quinn swallows all the air in the cab. Or that's what it feels like. Then she laughs it all out.

"Something funny?" the driver asks companionably.

She looks up. "No," she snaps.

Then she looks back at her phone. After a moment she tosses it back into her bag, then she fishes it back out and texts back 'Maybe.'

She smiles, leans her head against the window.

_Maybe, _she thinks.


	14. Chapter 14

**Author's Note:** Hey guys, this is a long one. Hope you all enjoy :)

* * *

Quinn steps out of a train at a quarter after ten on Saturday morning onto a very busy quay. She sighs and swings her bag over her shoulder, stands on lop-sided tip-toes and tries to scan the crowd for someone even smaller than she is. It's hopeless, of course, she can't begin to find Rachel, but it doesn't matter because in no time she is found.

By Santana.

Quinn frowns, and wonders for one dim second whether this is just a coincidence. Maybe Santana just happened to be taking a walk outside her train. Maybe she's getting on it. She does have a rather large handbag and Quinn can –

Santana grabs her with a firm roll of her eyes and hugs her. "Relax, Q," she says, "the hobbit will be along soon."

Quinn swallows. She prepares a half-baked smile just in time, as Santana releases her and says, "She thinks it's, like, _imperative, _her word, not mine, that you have a bagel in your hand the _nanosecond, _her word not mine, you set foot on New York ground." She yanks Quinn's bag off her shoulder and swings it over hers, raises an eyebrow. "Looks like she's failed you, already," she says.

"What," Quinn says softly. Then she closes her eyes, opens them, says "Hello Santana," and she thinks it sounds like she's happy to see her.

They forge a path through the crowd – or Santana does, using the bag over each shoulder to nudge people out of the way, and alternately apologizing sweetly in English and cursing menacingly in Spanish.

Quinn follows her ponytail, smiling a little as it swings manically from side to side. Maybe she really is happy to see her. Maybe she really has missed her. Maybe it's just that she thought that she was coming to see Rachel and she doesn't like surprises.

Maybe that's all.

When they get to a clearing Quinn notes that there's a stand selling, amongst other refreshments, bagels, and she shoots Santana a questioning look. Santana rolls her eyes again. "_Those _bagels aren't good enough for your Majesty," she says archly, lifting her wrist to look at her watch. Then she looks up abruptly and yells out, "Time is money, Berry! _Basta!_"

Quinn follows her eye-line and sees in the distance a spot of yellow bobbing up and down in a sea of gray. She smiles, instant and wide, and she thinks she can hear Santana saying "Yeah, yeah," she thinks she is probably rolling her eyes again. She folds her arms quickly, and roots her feet to the ground, but the smile doesn't stop.

Soon Rachel is visible. The yellow spot is a little hat, and Quinn thinks she must have worn it before, because it's so familiar. She's holding a bagel aloft in a napkin in one hand, and her purse in the other, and it almost seems as if she's galloping towards them, and her smile is probably bigger than Quinn's, and Quinn can hear it again, muttered and distant and fond, "Yeah, yeah," and something in Spanish that doesn't sound mean.

Rachel hugs Quinn with her hands full and then thrusts the bagel at her and thensays "Quinn!" and then "You're here!" and _then _"Hello!"

"Hello, Rachel," Quinn says, laughing, and she takes the bagel and Rachel says, "Quick, quick! Take a bite," and Quinn laughs again at her anxious expression, bites into the doughy bagel and smiles.

"Mmmm," she says, and Rachel is glowing and linking their arms and pulling her along. She starts telling her everything that has happened to her since they last saw each other in reverse, and Quinn munches on her bagel and tries to take in at least every other sentence, and it's several minutes before she has the presence of mind to look behind them and see that Santana is walking along behind them with her bag like a porter. She's about to unlink and hand the remains of the bagel to Rachel, walk back to her and insist on carrying her own bag, but Santana pulls her phone out of her pocket and starts texting intently as she walks, and Quinn thinks maybe it's better not to bother her.

She turns back to Rachel who's been saying her name a lot, and says, "Yes, yes, I'm here," and starts giggling and suppresses an urge to gallop.

They're out of the station and Rachel has stopped telling her her life story and started pointing out this building and that café and the other billboard and then she says, gleefully, "You don't even know why you're here!" and Quinn swallows and wonders what other surprises might be coming.

"For the love of god, just tell her," Santana says. She's caught up with them and is slipping her phone back into her pocket. It's proving difficult as her jeans are extremely tight. She stops trying and pulls it out again. "Britt says hi," she tells Quinn, "and she says she read your horoscope, aaaaaand," she reads off her phone, "'Luck is on your side this week, why not try your hand at poker, or buy a lottery ticket. And beware of wolves in sheep's clothing. That last part isn't in the horoscope, it's just good advice.'"

She grins at her phone like you coo at puppies, and flings it into her handbag. "You're going to a Broadway show, by the way," she adds, and then she turns around walks backwards, opens her mouth wide at Rachel. "That's right, I ruined it," she says proudly, just as Rachel whines, "Santanaaaaa."

Rachel sighs, and pulls Quinn closer to her. "You're going to a Broadway show," she confirms, and in the space of saying that sentence her irritation dissolves completely and she's grinning like a lunatic.

"Really?" Quinn asks. "Is it a good one?" She bites into her bagel, and smiles at Rachel as she chews. She does feel lucky.

"The _best _one," Rachel says excitedly, "Well, they are almost all the best ones, so…" she shakes her head and skips for a step or two and Quinn is pulled along with her. "Santana got the tickets. It was kind of a last minute idea and there was a line and I was _so sure _they were going to sell out, because I had a dream the night before where they sold out, which was also how I got the idea by the way, but Santana picked a fight with a girl in shiny sweatpants, and the girl ended up crying and saying she didn't want to fight her, and so then Santana started filing her nails in people's faces, and we wound up getting to the front of the line in no time, isn't she _brilliant?_" She beams at Santana and then at Quinn, and the three of them head down into the subway.

* * *

When they get to their destination, Quinn is confused. This definitely doesn't look like America's premiere academy of performing arts. This looks like a shabby apartment block in Brooklyn.

Santana taps the code in at the door and pulls a set of keys out as they go through and Quinn realizes this must be her place. She feels a pang of disappointment. She was really looking forward to seeing the inside of Rachel's dorm room. She was really looking forward to meeting Leanne and crushing her emotionally.

"Nice place you've got here," she says hesitantly, as she steps into the corridor. Santana says, "It's like an empty dumpster that's just been febrezed, but thanks." She strides into the living room and throws Quinn's bag on a mattress, says, "That's your bed," then nods at the two large beanbags next to it, says "That's Rachel's." Then she says, "There's only enough hot water for one shower in the morning, so the two of you are gonna have to soap yourselves up at the dorm, okay? Okay." She turns around and smiles politely at the two of them. "Would you like a tour?"

"Oh! Oh!" Rachel says eagerly, "I can give her the tour."

Santana's eyes narrow gently. "It's not your place, Berry," she says. Then she shrugs. "Although it may as well be, the number of times you crash." She flops down on one of the beanbags, looks up at Rachel slyly. "You should be paying me rent."

"Rent! Rent! Rent! Reeeent!" Rachel sings excitedly, and she grabs Quinn by the hand and gallops the very short distance into the kitchen. It's tiny. Smaller than most elevators. And when Rachel opens the cupboards to show Quinn where everything is she could swear there are jam jars for glasses. Next stop is the bathroom, which is marginally larger, and considering that all it has in it is a shower and a basin, Quinn thinks that's kind of a waste. The kitchen should have been in here, she thinks idly, then there would be…

Rachel grabs her hand again and pulls her out into the corridor. She gestures toward the toilet, and guides her into Santana's room, which is bigger than the living room, and again Quinn thinks it's the wrong way around, this should be the living room, and she frowns because there are clothes _all over _the bed and the floor, but at least it's clean – not just febrezed-clean - Santana was never neat like her, but she was always a germophobe, she actually kept chux and spray n wipe in her locker at school, and –

All this time Rachel has been babbling on merrily about the various amenities or lack thereof and how she finally got the courage up to take Quinn's advice and text Santana one time when Leanne had one of her man-friends over, and she wound up crashing here, and you know, Santana really isn't half as scary as everybody thinks, but she guesses Quinn would know that already, and –

That's where Quinn thinks Rachel was up to when she grabbed hold of her and fell silent. She's hugging her properly now, and her arms are crossed all the way over her shoulders, her fingers are pressing into her upper arms, her face pressed against her neck. "I'm so happy you're here," she says, unabashedly, and Quinn lifts her hands and curls them over Rachel's back, says simply, "Yes."

She closes her eyes. Her right leg is shaking again. She remembers how hard it was for her to say anything like that to Rachel when she arrived in New Haven and compares it with how easy it is for Rachel to say it right up close in this moment… and she feels ashamed.

That's when Santana walks briskly past them and wrenches her closet door open. "Ladies, can you keep it to your own room?" she asks, pulling a sweater out and swapping it with the one she's wearing.

Rachel laughs and lets go. "_Oh Santana,_" She says affectionately, and she takes Quinn's hand again and leads her back through the corridor into the living room. She tells her to sit down on her mattress and pulls a notebook out of her bag, sits down opposite her on one of the beanbags.

"Okay," she says, "So I've made some notes."

* * *

Rachel is a born tour guide, Quinn thinks. She can imagine her up the front of a double-decker bus with a microphone, pointing left and right, saying _Ladies and gentlemen _every few minutes in a commanding voice that gets boomed out of speakers for the people upstairs. She's only been in New York a few months and she must have been busy with school but she still seems to have absorbed so much about the way the city works and all its wonders, great and small. She _knows _so much, and Quinn can barely keep up.

What she isn't aware of: Rachel has spent the past week googling feverishly, amassing information about the sights they will see. She wants to impress Quinn with how much of a New Yorker she has become, and with, well, how much stuff she knows.

It's working, she thinks, with a glow of pride, as Quinn follows her, often open-mouthed and with barely a chance to get a question out before Rachel has answered it for her.

First things first: they get on the Subway and head to Battery Park, which Rachel says always makes her think of battery hens and then she just wants to cry, but they can get a really good view of the Statue of Liberty, which is important so they can really get inspired.

Quinn smiles and tells her to think of the batteries in remote controls and flashlights – maybe that's what the place is named after – it's definitely not named for animal cruelty or PETA would have bombed it by now.

She's trying to be funny – maybe. Rachel smiles earnestly and tells her the park is named after the artillery batteries that were positioned there in the city's early years to protect the settlement behind them, but she still thinks about the hens because somebody has to.

They sit on a bench and look out and it's _freezing _in the wind coming off the sea_, _but Rachel doesn't seem in the least bit worried and Quinn isn't going to say a word until she's genuinely concerned for the safety of the tip of her nose. Unusually, Rachel doesn't seem to want to talk, and Quinn is glad because her teeth would chatter if she had to answer any questions. After a minute or two Rachel leans in and explains that she doesn't think they should speak, because this seems to be a solemn occasion, and Quinn smiles with as little twitching as she can manage and nods her head.

After they've sat for a sufficient length of time, Rachel marches Quinn past City Hall, Chinatown and Little Italy, and up to Washington Square Park, tour guiding all the way, though at a breathless pace, and when they get to the park she mentions coffee, but then exclaims, "Ooh the East Village!" and lurches to the right.

Quinn's feet hurt already and her eyes are sore. She starts to fall behind a little, and Rachel turns back and says, "No rest for the wicked!" and smiles encouragingly. Quinn picks up the pace. She wants to say something cute like, "I'm not a bad girl anymore though," but Rachel might think that she minds – and she doesn't mind – she does mind that her feet hurt and her eyes are sore and she wants coffee and she should have worn gloves and for all she knows they're going to walk around the whole city and when she finally gets to sit down again it'll be back at Battery Park in the freezing sea-wind.

But it's not long before she is sitting down, on the Subway, for a few warm, less than fragrant, greatly relieved minutes. They never made it to whatever they were heading toward in the East Village – Quinn supposes Rachel changed her mind - when they alight at the end of their journey Rachel pronounces proudly, "The Metropolitan Museum Of Art," and spreads her arms wide.

They blitz through the Met in an hour and ten minutes, and Rachel has at least three facts and one personal observation to give her about every artifact they linger in front of. Afterward, they stop for juice nearby, and Rachel says earnestly, "The best juice bar in Manhattan. They say its beverages have qualities akin to the water at Lourdes."

The juice is good, Quinn thinks, though she's not sure it's curing any cancer she may or may not have, and it's so cold out that she can't help feeling hot chocolate might have been a better choice – or the coffee she was teased with back at Washington Square.

Again, Quinn wishes she'd worn gloves, as she notes that Rachel has put hers on at some point. She swaps the chilled Styrofoam cup from one bare, bone-cold hand to another and Rachel notices, promptly sets her juice down on a bench and tugs her gloves off. She spends five minutes trying to convince Quinn to put them on, succeeds in squeezing one of her fingers into the wrong hole, and then, with a particular kind of triumph, says well neither of them will have them then, and thrusts them into her bag, picks up her juice, takes Quinn's hand in her warmer one and pulls her onward.

They're supposed to be getting on the subway again to head to Fifth Avenue to see how "the other tiny, tiny fraction" live, only Rachel realizes with a sharp little gasp and a hand banged against her chest that they need to make a detour _immediately_. She's still holding Quinn's hand and she yanks her along, and Quinn's boots are brand new and kind of slippy - she almost falls, but not quite, and Rachel squeezes her hand reassuringly but stops for no man – or woman.

"Third Avenue," she says breathlessly, when they arrive, with a series of entreating nods after it, and then, before Quinn can ask what she's supposed to be looking at, their cups are in the trash and they're getting in a cab she did not see coming.

Because Rachel pulls Quinn inside with a little too much enthusiasm she ends up slumped over her for a good second or two, and Rachel giggles like she couldn't possibly be sober even though she is, and says "Driver, 1157 please!" whilst Quinn hauls herself up over to her side and puts her seatbelt on. Then Rachel turns to her sharply, leans in and whispers, "Normally I would say between 'such and such' and 'such and such,' because that is what a trueNew Yorker does in these situations, but I can't remember what 1157 is between on account of I've only been there once and forgot to write it down."

"Google maps?" Quinn says softly, and Rachel smiles like she said, _That's cool._

When the driver slows, Rachel thrusts bills at him, and Quinn looks around out the window expectantly. She supposes she'll be seeing that other Taj Mahal, given how excited Rachel was about getting here, and then, just as she thinks it, she laughs at herself, because Rachel gets excited over the littlest things – she always has – Christmas lights, that time Mr Schue bought them all sodas, Artie pinching a candle out with his fingers, little boxes "even if there's nothing in them," dogs – it doesn't matter whether they're big or small or in between – she always gets excited about dogs, cats too, actually, Sugar's pet tortoise that she had for six days, Rachel went _crazy _over him, and her – Quinn – 'She gets excited about me,' Quinn thinks, and suddenly she's remembering that time Rachel closed her eyes and lifted her hands up and said with such conviction so many things that she has never forgotten.

_Do you not understand what you mean to me?_

Quinn frowns. She's being pulled out of the cab on the road side, and a car speeds past and she grabs Rachel and slams her back against the cab door. "Oh my god," she whispers. Her body is pressed fast against Rachel's and Rachel's is pressed fast against the car, and she's not sure which one of them is saying "Are you okay?"

She blinks. "Sorry," she says, "I was scared you were going to die."

Rachel shakes her head wordlessly, then says, "Been there," blinks too, and the cab driver toots his horn to tell them that he's taking off and they'll need to find something else to hold them together.

Rachel waves and straightens and Quinn straightens too and tries to wave. She feels crippled – again. She feels like she's been wrecked. But Rachel doesn't seem to notice. She tugs her forward and onto the pavement, and looks up and points and says, "This is where Barbra first lived, when she first moved here, when she was 21 years old, in 1962."

Quinn smiles, looks up, then back at Rachel, says softly "You beat her," and Rachel turns to her and confirms loudly, "Yes!"

When Rachel decides they've stared enough and she has sighed wistfully three times and Quinn has smiled three times to match, she bundles them into another cab and they head back up Third Avenue. Quinn's stomach starts growling – no, growling is too cute – it's _gurgling _like a drunk on the side of a road - and she realizes with some irritation that this is the one sound she is absolutely powerless to stop herself making. Rachel doesn't comment, and Quinn thinks maybe she didn't hear. But when they stop at a hot dog stand and Rachel absolutely _insists _on buying one for Quinn, she knows that she did.

"You _have _to have one," Rachel says firmly, "It's _so _important. It's so important that I almost had one when I first arrived, and if you have one now then I'll get to experience it vicariously. Mustard? Relish?"

Quinn says yes and no to both. She's never been all that fond of sausages and it's all happening so fast, and suddenly the hot dog is in her hands and Rachel is watching her expectantly. Quinn takes a bite, and Mmmms like she did with the bagel, and Rachel looks _so _pleased, and links arms with her and hurries them along, telling her about a place called _Diablo _that does Vegan hotdogs and they are amazing, but she knows that it's cheating.

It's after four when they get to Fifth Avenue – or, more precisely a street near Fifth Avenue - and Quinn has thrown the paper from her hot dog in the bin and worried about the grease that somehow ended up on her fingers, and Rachel has pulled hand-sanitizer out of her bag and solved the problem for her.

Once Quinn feels suitably clean, she fixes her hair and they both put lipstick on and then they go into all the most glamorous looking boutiques and department stores on a mission to find the largest and most opulently adorned fitting room. "See," Rachel whispers in Dior, gingerly picking up a blue beaded gown and glancing at a security guard who has his eyes on her. _Twenty six thousand, _she mouths reverently.

Quinn smiles and says that's too bad, she was thinking of picking up a dress to wear tonight, but this stuff is probably a little out of her price-range. Rachel claps her hands. She is pleased. Quinn has a problem and she has the solution. This is even better than the hand sanitizer versus the mustard. She tells Quinn she has the solution – "I have the solution," - and to follow her. She marches out of the store with a haughty, "Thank you," to the security guard, and skips off the step.

They don't go far but Rachel seems to think the trip needs commentary. "We are currently promenading what is known as the 'Garment district,'" she says slowly, like you walk with a book on your head, "an area less than one square mile which, since the early twentieth century, Quinn, has been the center for fashion manufacturing and fashion design in all of America and _even the world._" She raises both eyebrows and nods as if to say, "It's true," and Quinn smiles and nods back and makes a mental note to check Wikipedia, because she's pretty sure that whole sentence will be there minus her name.

They wind up going into a large boutique warehouse with a high, beamed ceiling and white pillars with strange faces carved into them. "This is where all the up and comers sell their stuff," Rachel says excitedly, then she admits, with a little shrug, because she really can't take all the credit for these things however much she'd like to, "Kurt told me about it."

Quinn is in heaven, really. There are ways in which she's always been a girly girl and this is one of them: clothes and the selecting of them and the hoarding of them in fitting rooms. She tries on many dresses, and Rachel sits outside the fitting room and oohs and ahhs with each one, and sometimes she actually applauds, and Quinn puts those ones in the maybe pile.

The maybes all become no's when Rachel gasps. It's the pink, Quinn thinks, definitely the pink. The dress is pale and sleeveless with a v-neck and a lower V down the back, and it's breathlessly tight to the waist, then flares ostentatiously down to her knees. Normally she would say it was too much: the color, the cut, the lace petticoat underneath, the mild sheen to the fabric – it is all too much and she knows it. Normally this would be the kind of thing she would try on for the sake of it, already knowing it was something she would never actually wear.

But Rachel gasped about it, Quinn thinks. And if you can't wear something Rachel gasps about to a Broadway show, then what is the world coming to?

The price tag doesn't say $26,000, or anything close, but the sum is way over her budget nonetheless. Still, Quinn doesn't feel guilty when she hands over her card. _You'll pay for it later, _she thinks cheerfully, and the two of them leave the store arm in arm, with Rachel complaining that she'll look so ordinary next to her now, and before Quinn can object appropriately she waves a hand and says, "I would have looked ordinary anyway."

Quinn hesitates. When she finally says, "Nonsense," it doesn't seem like enough, but the trouble is that everything else she can think of saying seems like too much: _There's nothing ordinary about you, _she grimaces, _You have no idea how much better than me you are, _the grimace deepens.

She really doesn't though – she really doesn't know. And Quinn wonders if it made no difference at all that she was crowned Prom Queen. Does she know it was rigged? she wonders anxiously. Did Santana ruin that too?

She's still trying to decide what to say for the best when she realizes it's much too late. Rachel is back in tour guide mode and Quinn is being whisked through the streets to the Chelsea Hotel, while Rachel sings a lumpy, _gorgeous _mess back at her _I remember you well… You were talkin' so brave… _and then engages her in debate about the place of pornography in art.

Quinn shakes her head and tries to decide what she thinks. She makes a mental note to compliment Rachel later, no matter how ridiculous her outfit could possibly turn out to be. She has another couple of hours to think of something clever to say: something that will hit just the right note without hitting a whole lot of others in between.

Rachel is saying that Leonard Cohen sings without singing and she's not sure how she feels about it, to be quite honest.

"You told me again you preferred handsome men…" she sing-speaks gently, absent-mindedly, as she half-runs to a subway stop.

She looks back at Quinn in the bleak winter sunlight as she hurries down the stairs. She thinks she can hear the train pulling in. Maybe they'll miss it and it won't matter. She is happy. She is really, really, really happy. This has been the thought that has sprung to mind, before and after any and all others, all day long.

* * *

They go back to Santana's place to get Quinn's toiletries and the rest of her outfit that isn't the pink dress, and then they get right back on the subway and go to NYADA.

"We could just sneak a shower," Rachel says doubtfully, "But I tried that once and the water ran out and Santana got _really _mean about it."

She really did – she swore and threw things and told Rachel she was going to give her mattress to the hobo who hangs out on the corner of 13th and 51st because _he _had more respect for her. Rachel's not sure whether to cringe or laugh at the memory, so she does both.

Quinn says it's okay, she doesn't mind, and she really doesn't, because she really wanted to see NYADA. She is looking forward to meeting Leanne, and when they get to Rachel's dorm room and she is nowhere to be seen, Quinn's face falls.

Rachel's perks right up. "Oh thank god," she says, and then she proceeds to explain her bed and her chest of drawers and her desk and her window to Quinn in great detail while she gathers up her things.

She looks round at Quinn guiltily when she opens her closet door, and before she can block it with her body Quinn glimpses a mass of dirty laundry in there. Rachel starts to explain the laundry in terms of her being brought up in a household where the cleaning lady was on speed dial, and in terms of her reasonable expectation of fame and wealth, and while she does Quinn scans the room uselessly for Rufus, thinks that he is so tiny he could be anywhere, thinks that it would be so easy for him to get lost if you weren't careful, interjects along the way saying she's disappointed, she would have liked to have met Leanne, she was curious to see how easy it would be to break her.

Rachel rolls her eyes. "Santana has already unleashed Snix on her several times. It. Makes. No. Difference."

"Santana was here?" Quinn asks uneasily in a squeaky kind of voice. She thinks she sees Rufus on the night-stand but it might be a pair of earrings. She inches closer.

"Yes!" Rachel says. "Well I thought it was only fair to give her the NYADA tour since I'm always crashing at her place."

Quinn says, "That's nice," and she thinks, _That's weird._

And she thinks it's not Rufus on the night-stand next to the photo of Finn that is still there. She thinks he's nowhere to be seen.

She's not sure why, given that she was the one who told Rachel she should go see Santana in the first place, but she's unnerved by this friendship the two of them seem to have struck up. They were always more kind of… acquaintances, weren't they? She thinks back, trying to remember if she's ever witnessed any interaction between the two of them of any significance. All she can remember is that time the two of them sang _So Emotional, _and it looked like fun, but then Rachel had fun with everybody – well, she sang with everybody – she sang a lot of fun songs with Blaine, for instance, and the two of them only ever kissed the one time and it was only an ex –

Rachel rushes from the window to the door suddenly and hisses "_Quinn!_"

Quinn looks up. She feels dazed. It's overheated in here to compensate for the cold outside and it makes her brain mushy. She doesn't know how anyone could get anything done in these conditions. She swallows. "What?" she asks feebly.

Rachel's already pulling her out of the room and saying she can see Leanne down below and they have to make their getaway _now._

* * *

They shower, and dress. Rachel is out before her, and Quinn clutches her towel around her body, takes in the dark blue shift and the sheer black tights and the little silver pumps on her feet and thinks _Not ridiculous._

She's still not sure what to say but she knows she can't say that. 'Rachel you look a lot less silly than usual,' probably wouldn't be helpful.

She hesitates. She's not exactly sure how to go about changing into her dress without being flat out naked at some point. Ordinarily she would change in the cubicle, but there's steam and water everywhere, and her dress is new and expensive and she's worried about it. She glances at the bag, then at the door, then at Rachel, then down at her toweled-up body, and Rachel says, "Oh!" and hurries over to the door, hugs it, closes her eyes, says "I'll stand guard."

Quinn smiles tentatively. She lets the towel drop to the floor and steps out of it. She wonders if Rachel will open her eyes. She's done that before – by accident – sometimes you just forget and open your eyes and suddenly you're seeing all sorts of things you really shouldn't.

She fishes out her underwear and her pantyhose and puts them on slowly – she knows the faster you try to go with this kind of thing the longer it takes. She watches Rachel as she works, and her lashes stay pressed against her cheek, but then she smiles, ever so slightly, and Quinn flinches, and she says "Hurry up," and Quinn lunges for the bag with the dress in it, doesn't look back at her until it's on and her shoes too.

"All done," she says, and Rachel spins around and hurries back to the basins. She gasps on the way, and Quinn thinks now she's just doing it on purpose. She grins and shakes her head, opens up her bag and pulls her compact out and gets to work.

Ten minutes later Quinn stares impassively at her perfect reflection. It is perfect, she thinks, in that everything is in its place; everything is how it's supposed to be. She frowns. She wants to take all the makeup off and start again all of a sudden. She wants to take her hair out of its bun and shake it out. She wants to take the dress off and put on the rumpled skirt and sweater at the bottom of her bag. She feels silly. She looks down at her shoes and thinks how they don't even really go.

And then Rachel is saying, "Quinn," with great trepidation, and Quinn turns to her and covers her mouth with her hand.

"I tried to do smokey eyes," Rachel says by way of explanation, as Quinn takes in the hefty rings of black gunk around her eyes.

Rachel whimpers and starts loading up a cotton wool ball with makeup remover. "Kurt did it for me last weekend and it looked _so different, _but we had nowhere to go and it was such a shame to sit at home being different, and I just thought…" She shakes her head ruefully and starts rubbing at her eyes.

Quinn smiles, leans over and rifles through Rachel's makeup case and through her own while she works. It's a good few minutes before the gunk is off Rachel's face and then she opines that her skin is all red from scrubbing at it. Quinn has everything lined up. She sighs, smiles, says, "First things first. Smokey eye-makeup is supposed to bring out your eyes, not swamp them," she says authoritatively. She takes hold of Rachel's chin and tilts it toward her. "I need to be able to look into your eyes and see you even more clearly than I can right now."

Rachel nods thoughtfully, and Quinn reaches over and grabs hold of a long thin brush. "You need to use one of these," she says, "Those little stubby things that come with the eye shadow are not the same thing."

She tells Rachel to close her eyes. She gets to work.

It seems to take so long that Rachel says uncomfortable things like, "I'm an artist not a work of art," and Quinn says, "Shh," and, "Keep still," and again "Keep _still,_" when Rachel tries to slowly lift her arm to look at her watch. It must be forever since she started. She's seriously worried they're not going to make it to the theater at this rate.

But she keeps still. Quinn was very firm about it. And besides this seems like it could be sort of magic. Rachel finds herself wondering: if Cinderella's fairy godmother had been Quinn Fabray instead of a chubby old lady with wings, would she have looked even better at the ball?

She smiles goofily, and Quinn says, "_Still."_

Quinn says she can open her eyes now, and Rachel thinks that means she must be done, but she's not. Suddenly all sorts of other products are happening to her face. Quinn's fingers are dabbing gently under her eyes, over her cheeks, and across her lips in feathery little touches. And again, it seems like forever. Rachel closes her eyes again, and again, Quinn tells her she can open them.

"There," she says softly, and Rachel turns to the mirror. At first it seems like Quinn's done nothing at all. And then she notices that the redness is gone, and she looks flushed in other places. Her lips are picking up the light. Her eyes are bright and seem to beam from a long way off inside her. She blinks quickly and she can see gentle smudges of gray and… blue?

"Wow," she says quietly. "I look even more… different."

She catches Quinn's eye in the mirror and Quinn says, "Beautiful. You can say it, Rachel."

She seems very serious about it. So serious that Rachel can't help but laugh. And then when Quinn frowns sternly at her, she says, in all seriousness, "It _is _beautiful, and thank you," because it really is, it's _beautiful, _Quinn has really done a _beautiful _job, and Rachel is busy admiring her brushstrokes up close, when Quinn says quietly behind her, "No, that's not what I meant."

Quinn thinks the next few seconds are going to be crucial.

They're not.

Rachel has started humming and talking about Abba. Quinn smiles and thinks about Berlin.

They're out the door and on their way before Quinn can figure out just exactly what was – or wasn't – at stake.


	15. Chapter 15

**Author's Note: **Hi guys! Surprise update. I didn't have time to reply to people's reviews for chapter 14, though let me be clear I LOVED THEM and am so grateful to you all for reading and commenting. It's just that it was either the replies or the new chapter. I did what I thought was right. Hope you enjoy :)

* * *

Rachel's room is sixteen paces in heels from the bathroom. The stairs are twelve from Rachel's room. Quinn forgets to count how many to the subway because Rachel grabs her arm suddenly and says _"OH!"_

Next: "You _need _to come back tomorrow though because you _need _to meet Melanie." She looks worried for the barest whisker of a second. "_Mel!_" she corrects herself.

"Oh?" Quinn asks quietly and roundly. She has no idea who Melanie – Mel! – is. And she supposes that's the whole point but she still shrugs Rachel's hand away – yes, she's still holding on – she still smiles awkwardly, sarcastically at the pavement and bites back _What's so special about…_

She shakes her head. She feels like she's drunk, but maybe that's just Rachel and the pavement. Maybe that's just New Haven and New York. It's been a long day. She's tired. She's seen too many sights. She's spent too much money – _already – _and she's –

Rachel's telling her she has a friend. She's blushing about. Quinn is something like disgusted and something like touched.

"See I was going to text you to tell you as soon as it happened but then I wasn't sure, you know? Because you have to be sure, right?" Rachel says. She looks up at Quinn expectantly.

Quinn shrugs.

"Kind of," she says. She notices nothing.

Rachel looks at her funny – she knows her face looks funny when she feels like this. Like somebody is ignoring her and it's not the way things are supposed to be. Like she just sang the whole world to an empty room.

She has a friend! _She has a friend._

She thinks Quinn should act like somebody just cut a ribbon. She tries to find irony in the feeling but she can't. It is what it is.

_Snip! _she thinks anxiously, and she says, "I mean but now we've had coffee three times, and one of those times was _before _class, so we had to arrange to meet."

Rachel hurries to catch up because all somehow she has to. Quinn is nodding and saying "Wow, Rachel," in the least impressed voice in the world, and she wants to stop her. She wants to say, indignantly, 'You don't even know where we're going.' Instead she says, "And then I met her mother and she said she'd heard _everything _about me."

"Everything?" Quinn questions, turning around, turning too quickly back. Rachel barely makes out her face but she can hear in her voice that she's teasing. She staggers quickly behind her and finally says, _"Wait!" _because this is outrageous. She shouldn't have to work this hard outside of a treadmill.

Quinn waits. She's fine to wait. She has no problem waiting. She is a _million miles _ahead, anyway. And there's no hurry when you don't even know where you're going.

She swallows and looks back. Rachel is fastening her shoe all of a sudden, and she cranes her neck, looks up, says, "She took her boyfriend to come see me sing at Farinellis and they both cried." She stands up, brushes her hair out of her eyes. "Hard," she says, like an exclamation point in bold. Italics, maybe.

Quinn laughs. She takes hold of Rachel's arm again – no, not again – the way Rachel took hold of hers.

Rachel smiles. She wonders if Quinn is laughing because it's a lie and it sounds like one. She never met Melanie's boyfriend because Melanie doesn't have one – she thinks – she frowns – she's pretty sure Melanie – _Mel – _couldn't have a boyfriend, because she's pretty sure she isn't the kind of girl who'd ogle the smarmy upper classman for everyone to see if she had something better back home.

Rachel frowns. She knows Finn was in Lima for Thanksgiving – obviously. She knows Quinn was there too because Blaine texted hourly updates.

The furrow in her brow deepens and doesn't shift until they're in the subway and she smiles and doesn't say a word about Finn and asks Quinn how Joe is instead.

Quinn raises her eyebrows, asks primly, "Which one?"

Rachel smiles more insistently. "Yale Joe, of course," she says.

Quinn shakes her head. "He's good," she says, then, "Lima Joe is good too."

"Sure," Rachel says, and "Well I mean he was always an especially good person, wasn't he?"

"Sure," Quinn says back, "except when he's helping you with your physical therapy and he gets an erection right - "

Rachel's eyes widen and she starts shushing her madly. Nobody's looking their way, so maybe it doesn't matter, maybe the whole world has lost its innocence or its hearing or both, but Rachel, all on her own, is mortified, and she never wants to hear the word erection come out of Quinn's mouth again except perhaps in an architectural context.

She relays that information to Quinn and Quinn does nothing but laugh.

And before she can finish laughing Rachel is whispering "Oh my god, what happened though?" and then, before Quinn can tell her, she adds, also in a whisper, "You should have asked _me _to help_._"

* * *

It's only the Circle of Life and Rachel is already weeping openly.

Quinn supposes it is quite moving - or disturbing - or both – with its message of endlessness, of the trading of loss for inevitability – the idea that it's okay because nothing matters because we don't – dream away, but plans are impossible, all things worth having are ultimately unhaveable - no matter how hard you try.

She winces even though nothing hurts. She's not sure at what stage you should touch someone's shoulder or ask if they're okay or calmly escort them out of the building. Rachel has a small box of tissues on her lap and Quinn has no idea where it came from. Every so often she pulls one gingerly out, careful not to make a sound, even if she already has one, two, three, four, in her hand, and Quinn thinks at this rate they'll need a plastic bag to put them all in. She peers at the unreadable space at their feet where Rachel's handbag might be, she wonders if there's a plastic bag in there and as soon as she wonders she knows that there is.

Rachel blows her nose when people are applauding and smiles at Quinn in the dark.

This is the best night of her life. She always thinks that and she's always right. Well, except that one time Finn kissed her on stage and then they lost Nationals. That wasn't actually the best night of her life.

(Rachel's a romantic, but you can't call anything the best when you lose, you just can't.)

She shakes her shoulders out and quickly wipes at her eyes – quickly, but carefully. She suspects she'll be a mess at interval, but really, that's half the fun. She's of the firm belief that if you don't leave a Broadway musical without smudges under your eyes you have no heart – _least _of all The _Lion King._

She remembers watching the movie over and over when she was five. Her dads told her it belonged to her – because it was released in the year of her birth – and she told everybody at school this when she got there. A girl with aggressive blonde ringlets, all of six years old, raised both eyebrows, put her hands on her hips, and lisped "We were _all _born in the Lion King year though."

Rachel doesn't remember this – but her dads have reliably informed her that she cried and said she would never share her fruit pieces with any of them ever – and she didn't.

That's as much reflection as she'll allow herself. The Morning Report is starting. She sits forward in her seat.

Quinn thinks it's getting better but she is no less distracted. Rachel's wearing a smile she can only see because her teeth are gleaming. She wonders if she had them whitened – she can't remember them being this glow-in-the-dark back when they watched movies in class or sat in the audience at Glee competitions.

She's leaning forward a little – almost so much that Quinn has to lean forward too – just a bit. That's nothing new though. Rachel can't watch much of anything without leaning forward.

And when she's really happy she taps her feet. Quinn smiles. She can feel the gentle patter through their mutual floor. She wonders if other people can feel it. She thinks how when children do this kind of thing she has to picture them as Beth to keep from speaking to their mothers.

When the stampede begins Rachel's own feet still, and she grabs Quinn's hand without so much as a _Would you mind. _Quinn jumps in her seat, and Rachel leans in close and whispers a sympathetic "I know."

She doesn't know, though. Quinn hasn't had a chance to enjoy a single thing that's happened on the stage yet, because of Rachel's ridiculous behaviour. All the crying? All the touching? It's taking things a little far, Quinn thinks indignantly, as her fingers curl around Rachel's, as she leans forward and peers and tries to remember why this is important and exactly who is responsible for it.

She did see the movie when she was a kid. Everyone did, so she did too – right?

She thinks she did. She thinks there was a story her parents used to tell. She is sure there is a story, but she can't remember. She swallows, closes her eyes, tries to focus. And then she's afraid to open them again.

When she does it's just in time to see Mufasa die. Quinn blinks. Her chest hurts and she feels lonely and tired of trying to understand why. Simba curls up against his father and Rachel curls up against her.

Quinn keeps looking straight ahead. She doesn't sit back in her seat. She is as straight-backed as anything that's ever been properly upholstered. She can take the weight of Rachel's musical theatre grief against her body without slouching – without flinching either. Her lips make a firm line.

Rachel is crying. Really _crying. _It's wet and warm and Quinn thinks it must be salty too, because that's what tears taste like. She worries about the makeup and her dress until she realizes it's sleeveless. Then she has nothing to worry about except her bare skin - and that can be washed right? You can get anything out of your skin - right?

Rachel turns her face to the side. Her cheek remains pressed to Quinn's arm, and it is equally wet, warm and salty, and Quinn wants to laugh suddenly. She almost does.

When the lights go up she's very glad she didn't, because it seems that the last song didn't pep anyone around them up enough for laughing. Everyone has a very serious face on, of one kind or another. One man inches past them with gritted teeth, a little girl follows, crying that she wants to go home.

And then Rachel has peeled herself away from Quinn all of a sudden and is hurrying along behind them without so much as, "Come on," or a backward glance.

Quinn considers just staying put. She doesn't.

* * *

By the time Quinn gets to the bar the line is tumbling mess, and it is at that length where by the time you get your drink you don't have time to drink it. She sighs. She turns around in a full circle slowly and uselessly. She doesn't even know if Rachel wants a drink. She doesn't even know where Rachel is.

Then suddenly she's thinking of Santana nail-filing her way through a crowd to obtain tonight's tickets against all odds. She steels herself. She puts on her best shy smile.

_No props necessary,_ she thinks, as she gently says, "Excuse me," and "I'm so sorry," and "My mom is" dot, dot, dot, all the way till there's only one thickness of person between her and her destination.

She smiles a little less shyly to herself, then fumbles anxiously in her purse for cash and the fake ID she doesn't want to need.

* * *

Rachel dabs anxiously at the skin under her eyes. She's not quite back to Square Do It Yourself, but she's certainly damaged Quinn's oeuvre with her unbridled weeping. She doesn't feel too guilty though. It's to be expected, after all. She's not a machine!

Still, she should have thought to bring concealer. Somebody jostles her out of the way of the basin, and she casts a final backward glance at the mirror and thinks maybe it's for the best. She almost beat the rush on the bathroom, but if she actually takes the time to fix her face she'll end up with no time to even talk to Quinn before the interval is up.

She stops at the door, hurriedly applies more lip gloss.

* * *

When Rachel comes out of the bathroom she sees Quinn immediately. She's standing opposite by the staircase with a glass of champagne in each hand and her program tucked under her arm, and she sees Rachel immediately too, and for a second they both stay completely still.

Quinn is shadowed by the balustrade from above; soft, dark splashes obscure her eyes, then her lips, as she tilts her head slightly, and Rachel thinks _I have no idea what she's thinking, _and then, curiously, _I never have any idea what she's thinking._

Rachel is backlit in the bathroom doorway, and there's a little gust of wind coming from somewhere that lifts her hair toward her chin. Quinn casts her eyes quickly downward till she gets to the silver shoes, and she thinks Rachel does not look ridiculous – ridiculously so – and she thinks she probably should have bought her a Lion King shirt instead of the champagne, so she could put it on over her slinky blue dress and make them both feel more at ease.

_Alcohol will have to do, _she thinks, and she swallows, and then she starts coughing, at the exact same moment as a mother and a screaming child burst out of the bathroom and nearly knock Rachel to the ground.

They're both doubled over. Quinn feels her eyes water, and she thinks she's spilt a little champagne on the carpet, and she's pressing her arm to her ribs tightly, but she can still feel the program slipping.

Then Rachel is by her side and taking both glasses and saying, "Are you okay?" and Quinn looks relieved, and then she feels relieved, and her whole body relaxes and the program falls to the ground.

She smiles sheepishly, crouches down to pick it up, and when she's standing up Rachel says, "Wine again?" and "Are you sure this is such a good idea?"

Quinn smiles again and swallows and her throat constricts, she thinks she might be about to cough, and then she does, and while she does she runs through everything and anything she might have said or done that night in New Haven that would cause Rachel to believe tee-total was the way to go, and her mind rushes quickly, diligently to Rachel pulling at her pantyhose and laughing, she closes her eyes, she cringes, she grins.

"Quinn!" Rachel says, with a cross between amusement and alarm, "Quick, drink this!"

She thrusts the champagne into Quinn's hand, and Quinn takes a swig and sees through bleary eyes that Rachel does the same and then says, _Ahh, _and "Are you happy?" and "I'm so _happy._"

Quinn stands still again. She forgets about coughing. She looks at Rachel and sips her champagne and says, "Yes, thank you."

Rachel smiles. "Hakuna matata," she says. And then, quite earnestly, "What makes you feel this way? The way I'm feeling…" she trails off, shakes her head, takes another sip of champagne, elaborates. "I mean I sit there and I watch those people perform and I can feel the songs inside me to the point where it's almost _impossible _not to join in, you know? And I feel totally exhilarated, and like I know… like I know exactly the way the world is supposed to be." She smiles again, a little less boldly now. She asks, "What makes you feel that way, Quinn?" and takes a long, slow drink, like she's giving her time to consider.

(She thinks she is. She hears the jeopardy music in her head.)

Quinn's throat tickles violently – she drinks violently – a counter-attack. By the time she's done she can say, "What makes you think I don't feel that way now too?" and Rachel looks at her like she's waiting for the footnote, and Quinn laughs. "Even ordinary mortals get awe-struck, Rachel," she says, "It's actually easier for us."

Rachel nods and presses her lips together, thinks, _Pssschhh, _like someone cracking open a soda.

She's been so good about not saying anything about the poems and the _Yes, this, _in the margin that she had almost convinced herself she'd forgotten all about them till this opportunity presented itself. The truth is that she's been working hard at not wondering - at respecting boundaries and personal space and that kind of thing - at not asking leading questions or making remarks that are too obvious to really be sly – at not letting slip that she's an awful snoop of a human and that Quinn can never trust her in her room alone at night again.

But suddenly all her hard work seems to be coming undone. Suddenly she's irritated and frustrated and having to remind herself that just because somebody doesn't share their innermost thoughts and feelings with you doesn't mean you can call them a liar.

Certainly not out loud, anyway.

Rachel sighs. "Okay," she says, and then, "The Lion King is pretty powerful stuff, I guess." She narrows her eyes, says pointedly, "_Poetic, _wouldn't you say?"

Quinn just smiles. "I saw the movie when I was a kid," she just says, "It was at school and I was seven. This girl threatened to punch me because I didn't cry."

Rachel's eyes go from narrow to wide. She's forgotten all about the stupid poem and whatever this might or might not be.

"You… didn't cry?" she asks haltingly. And then she takes a breath in, she gets right up in Quinn's face and says, "_Wait _a second. I just spent five minutes in there trying to fix my smoky eyes." She peers appraisingly. "You were getting drinks in those five minutes and your makeup looks exactly the same as before the lights went down, that is to say, perfect."

Quinn laughs and ducks away. "I can't help it if I'm not a big sap, Rachel," she says, and Rachel's lip quivers comically.

She doesn't feel comical though. She thinks she'll _die _if Quinn doesn't understand this, because it's just _rude _to not understand Broadway in front of her, and after _all the trouble _she went to, and just when she thought this was a new best night of her life.

She sniffs awkwardly. She can't believe she's broken her no-crying promise to herself for nothing – she can't believe she's wept when she didn't want to (even she's sure there was always a sub-clause along the lines of Broadway doesn't count) and Quinn won't shed a single tear when as far as Rachel knows she never made any promises to herself and when it would be – Rachel frowns, she huffs internally – when it would be _polite, _she thinks.

She feels her face crumpling and hardening at the same time. She panics. She hurries over to the nearest table and sets her glass down and folds her arms, then unfolds them, and opens her program quickly, pretends to read, forces a benign smile onto her face.

_So much for nailing all the parts where the girl has to cry, _she thinks, and her nose tips up to the point where she can barely see the words on the page.

Quinn hesitates, then walks over to where Rachel is. She sets her glass down too, opens her program too, pretends to read too. And she thinks, _I've upset her, _and her toes scrunch in her shoes.

She wants to tell Rachel she's being silly. She wants to tell her she gets it just as much as anyone – just as much as she does – just as much as she'd like her too. She wants to say the only reason she wasn't swept up enough for tears is because she spent the whole time worrying Rachel's face and her skin. 'It was all _your _fault,' she considers saying, but she wonders whether that would make it worse. She wonders whether it would make everything worse to say that she did almost cry at one point, though she's not sure how much it had to do with the play and how much it had to do with her own special brand of crazy.

Her Rachel-crazy, she's tempted to call it, because her presence is beginning to seem like the common denominator in it.

No, she thinks quickly. Telling Rachel shemakes her cry would definitely make things worse. Because it would sound awful, wouldn't it? It would sound awful and she wouldn't be able to explain why it's not.

Wildly, she considers lying. 'Actually I did cry, a little.' Would that be plausible? It might have been if she'd just gone with it in the first place. Waterproof mascara will withstand a couple of stray tears, after all.

Clearly it won't withstand a Rachel-sized keg of them, though. She frowns, looks up from her program to see that she still has a little smudge under her left eye. Or maybe it's new. Quinn has an urge to reach out and fix it and she keeps her fingers tight on the pages, she says, without thinking, "I used to cry in Glee club sometimes, when you would sing."

Rachel looks up slowly, and Quinn shrugs. "And Mercedes, sometimes. And when the juniors did _In My Life…_" She smiles with another little shrug. "But I guess that's because it was a goodbye."

Rachel nods as slowly as she looked up and Quinn stays completely still.

_In for a penny, _she hears her grandfather say.

She makes her gaze entreating. She says softly, "I get it," and she hopes it is enough and she worries it is too much at the same time.

Rachel smiles in fits and starts. It seems to take a long time for her to get all the way there. "Well you don't have to cry about lion cubs you've never met, I guess," she says, and she thinks it sounds sort of sulky, and she is angry with herself, because she has never been more aware of Quinn trying for her sake than she is right now, and you're supposed to reward people when they try, right? You're supposed to give them a big gold star – especially when they try for your sake.

"No," Quinn objects, "I want to – I will," she adds hastily, and it sounds worryingly like a plan. She shakes her head, mutters, "Sometimes I overthink things," then she looks Rachel in the eye and says, "The production is _amazing, _Rachel, even Santana would be blubbering."

Rachel grins. "Santana blubbers all the time!" she says. "Though I think…" she hesitates, selects a somber tone, "I think some of that is about Brittany."

"Why would she be blubbering about Brittany?" Quinn asks, sipping her champagne, feeling soothed, safe. "That is so junior year," she says wryly, remembering how Santana spent half her time lashing out at people and the other half crying in corridors, and nobody could figure out why until it was obvious.

Rachel smiles sadly. "You know she tells me things sometimes and then I think she wishes she hadn't…" She shakes her head, "Never mind," she says, then apologetically, "I mean I probably shouldn't say." She opens up her program again and starts rattling off the projects the female lead has starred in and telling Quinn which parts she's going to play herself someday in the near future.

Quinn nods along. She tries not to feel left out. She reminds herself that she's never been the least bit interested in what Santana and Brittany do or do not do together, so why should Rachel let her in on any of it anyway.

She finishes off her champagne just as the bell begins to chime.

* * *

Everything's going just fine until Nala shows up. Pre-Nala there was no touching and a lot of keyboard smiling - a smattering of happy feet. Having glanced at the program before the lights went down, Quinn is fully braced for touching galore when the two childhood sweetheart lions meet up and start pouncing and nuzzling and singing love-songs and so on and so forth.

Only it doesn't come. Rachel makes tiny whining noises. She flutters uncomfortably. Twice, during 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight,' she turns to all the way around to Quinn and then back just as quickly. One of those times her hand rises from her lap and falls back down stiffly.

Quinn swallows. She pretends to ponder the situation and comes to a solid conclusion in the middle of it: Rachel clearly thinks she's not fit to share her feelings about adolescent leonine romance.

And as quickly as she's come to that conclusion she's doing something totally silly - really, she's reaching a new level of Rachel-crazy right now – it's a good thing she doesn't get to spend too much time with her, she thinks, fast and reassuring, because if she did she'd probably end up as ridiculous as she is – as ridiculous as she actually isn't always, not when she's wearing slinky blue dresses and standing in bathroom doorways, but that is beside the point.

Quinn is holding Rachel's hand. Quinn is holding Rachel's hand because she reached out in the dark and took it out of her lap. She bites her lip. She wants to laugh again, and if it was a bad idea before she's pretty sure it'd be a bad idea now.

_Stop it, _she thinks, now that it's too late. _Stop acting like you have something to prove._

Her hand stirs, just slightly. But Rachel hangs on. She hangs on so hard Quinn wonders if she didn't think she wasn't fit after all. She shakes her head a little. She lets go of her lip. She looks hard at the people on the stage pretending to be animals, and eventually she forgets about Rachel's hand and how it's in hers.

She entirely forgets until everything is over - until the reprise of the opening song at the end, when Rachel pulls her hand away hastily, starts to stand up and then hovers above her seat, poised, applause at the ready.

It's a standing ovation, of course, one that Quinn thinks Rachel might have started. She casts her eyes around the auditorium and up at Rachel's chin which is appearing and disappearing rapidly as she claps. The roar of the crowd's appreciation is like a sudden downpour, or thunder, or fireworks, and she feels knocked off balance even if she's sitting down. She stands, carefully, pushing herself up on the arms of the seat like she used to push herself up out of her chair. She's relieved when the people around her get to their feet just as she does.

She smiles. Rachel is yelling "Bravo!" at the top of her lungs and it's getting lost in the people in front of them. She starts sticking her fingers in her mouth and trying for a wolf whistle. It's not working.

Quinn smiles again. And again. And then again. She lifts her hands to her lips. She does it for her.

* * *

When they get back to Santana's place, they are tired out and very awake at the same time. Quinn kicks off her shoes with an unusual violence and a smile on her face, puts her falafel wrapper in the plastic bag in the kitchen that is the trash - Rachel is still going on hers because she's been talking the whole way home.

"Yum!" she declares loudly, twirling and munching at the same time. Quinn laughs, looks her way, nods, then says, "It was good."

"Spin around!" Rachel commands, the moment she has stopped spinning herself, and Quinn doesn't ask why. She spins, and Rachel swallows her mouthful quickly, says, "Faster!"

Quinn pirouettes – up on tip-toes, one foot pointed at her knee. She lets her arms lift up. She finishes in a lunge, and she feels her skirt float belatedly down to her thighs.

"It's so swishy," Rachel says approvingly. And then, "_Hey_, that was pretty."

She takes several bites off the falafel in quick succession and smiles with her mouth full.

Quinn curtsies.

And then there's a key in the door – Santana is home. She pushes the door open, poses in the frame, and says, without smiling, without the faintest hint of irony in her voice, "Put your dancing shoes on." She breaks the pose and strides into the apartment, dropping her bag and pulling her coat off as she heads to her room. Then she's back and waving a pair of stilettoes in Quinn's face. "Put these on," she says, and then she glances at Rachel, "Rachel, I was going to tell you to go back to the dorm and select your least offensive footwear, but it seems like you're already wearing them. Kudos." She frowns, looks Rachel up and down, appraisingly, "Kudos on the whole outfit actually. You look _way _less ridiculous than usual."

Rachel grins happily and smooths her skirt, and Quinn sniffs as she slides her feet into Santana's shoes, thinks maybe she should have said it after all – when she thought of it – earlier – before. She slides her feet into Santana's stilettos and buckles them at the ankle.

Santana heads back to her bedroom, then reemerges a second later. "Chop, chop," she says, somehow managing to clap her hands while slipping a mini-dress over her bra and tights.

Quinn thinks it's funny that she never got self-conscious about this kind of stuff – not when she was gay and nobody knew it – not when she was gay and everybody did. Santana's attitude to her body and the world didn't budge an inch.

Quinn tugs surreptitiously at her pantyhose. Rachel is busy pulling her hair up into a ponytail, and Santana says, "No, no, no," comes up behind her and pulls it back out, confiscates the band.

Then she's at the door tapping her foot. "Come on," she says, exasperatedly, "My friend is on the door for the next forty minutes, tops. I have a limited window to get you two in."

Quinn and Rachel swing their coats over their shoulders and hurry after her. Neither one of them asks where they're going, and each of them wonders if the other knows.


	16. Chapter 16

It's a smoky little club in Soho. Not smoky as in _actual _smoke, Rachel observes, because that would be illegal these days, she thinks, and unhealthy in any era, but she appreciates – out loud – that they've taken the trouble to recreate the atmosphere with smoke machines. It's warm and hazy and there are arm-chairs with velvet upholstery and martinis being served by bartenders in black tie, and just about everybody else is in black tie too, and there's a jazz band up on a poky little stage and people are dancing down below – properly dancing, Rachel thinks, in the way where you actually touch each other, in the way that hardly anyone her age ever wanted to dance before she found Glee.

Quinn's eyes are wide. Rachel looks at her while she looks at everything around them and smiles softly, and she feels a little crestfallen, because Quinn is _really _into this place, she can tell by the wide eyes and the looking around, and maybe it should have been on her list – maybe she should have known it existed and planned to come here all along.

Santana's leaning in and telling Quinn something Quinn's struggling to hear over the mellow thrum of the bass and the chatter on all sides.

Rachel watches them and waits for the moment to pass, but then Quinn is saying something back, and she's covering her mouth with her hand, and Rachel wonders if that means she's whispering, and she turns around, launches herself at the bar and says in a way she knows two seconds after she does is totally juvenile, "What's the best drink you have?"

She cringes, but the barman's eyebrow barely raises. "Depends what you're into, Miss," he says, and then, in a particularly gentle voice Rachel thinks is nice, "A Shirley Temple, maybe?"

Rachel smiles. Shirley Temple is what her dads used to call her when she was small and freakishly competent with song and dance routines. Sometimes they would curl her hair about it, and one always used to say to the other (she can't remember which): 'We'd be multi-millionaires by now if you weren't so hell-bent on giving our daughter a normal childhood.'

Rachel's still smiling. "Yes, please, three, please," she says, and she looks behind her at Quinn and Santana who are laughing about something now, and she's not sure whether it's the same thing they were whispering about or something new. She turns back, grabs her cash out of her bag.

When she's paid, she picks up one glass, then two, then hesitates, puts one down, looks back at Quinn and Santana and then up at the barman. He smiles, puts them on a tray, tells her to go join her friends and he'll bring the drinks over.

Rachel beams. That seems very sophisticated and appropriate. She hurries over to Quinn and Santana and announces, "I got us drinks," with an undeniable note of pride in her voice.

The barman is there almost as soon as she is, and the three of them take their cocktails and sip. Santana is the first to frown. Quinn noticed immediately, of course, but there's no way she's going to say anything. Of course, she knows there's no way Santana's _not _going to say anything, so she sighs in anticipation, and sure enough, Santana opens her mouth wide, closes it, cocks her head to one side and says, "Rachel what the hell did you order?"

Rachel's eyes widen. "Don't you like it?" she asks nervously. She wonders if Quinn doesn't like it. _She _likes it – or she thinks she probably does but she's barely had a chance to really sample it yet.

It's a little too fruity, maybe. She can't remember and she doesn't dare take another sip now. But it's… okay, she thinks... isn't it?

"The bartender recommended it," she says, doing her best not to sound defensive and thinking how it's lucky she's holding onto the drink otherwise she'd be folding her arms, "it's a Shir - "

"It's a god-damned Shirley Temple," Santana interrupts. Then she smiles, takes Quinn's glass, leans in to Rachel and says, "These are for kids, okay? There's no alcohol in them," and then she heads over to the bar.

Quinn stops her. "Wait!" she says, and Santana turns around with a questioning look on her face.

Quinn nods like she actually asked her something and then says, "I wanna finish it." Santana looks at her like she's gone soft and maybe she has but she doesn't care even if her cheeks are hot and her eyes are stinging from the smoke and she could really do with a drink – a real drink – right about now.

She shrugs, glances quickly at Rachel who is sipping her Shirley Temple behind her hair, and says again, "I wanna finish it," and "it's nice."

She takes her glass back, and when Santana is gone with her own, she leans in, pulls back the curtain of Rachel's hair and clinks her glass against hers. "Cheers," she says, and Rachel says, "Cheers," back in a clumsy, grateful kind of way, and then, after a beat, just a little thickly, "Santana always knows the best places."

Quinn shrugs, and Rachel tips her head to one side and grins and says "Come on," and then "You love it," and Quinn's lips twitch with an involuntary smile because it would be impossible to deny that she does – she loves it – she loves this place – she loves this night – she loves everything about it all – even the bad bits.

Santana is back a couple of minutes later balancing a tray well above her head that is laden with six shot glasses and her own Shirley Temple. "Vodka," she says, as she tips two shots into each of their glasses, When she's done, she hands the tray to a passing bartender, takes a long drink and says, "All better."

Rachel gulps enthusiastically and regrets it just as enthusiastically. Quinn sips and comments that it's a little strong. Santana rolls her eyes and when there's been too much silence between them and so much merriment around them Quinn starts to feel uncomfortable. She tries to make conversation by telling Santana about their night. "The play was _amazing_," she says, "You should have come."

And when she says it she wonders, with a strange violence, why Santana didn't come. She went with Rachel to get the tickets but they only bought two. Did she intend them to be for her and Rachel? Did Rachel intend one to be for Quinn? Was it a misunderstanding? Or did Santana know, all along?

Santana just says "Uh huh," distractedly, and then strides swiftly across the room while people part naturally around her, throws herself into an armchair that has just been vacated. She gestures for Quinn and Rachel to join her, and the two of them perch on an arm each.

Quinn hums _Hakuna Matata, _under her breath and glances at Rachel and says again to Santana, "You really should have come. You don't know what you missed."

"Sure I do," Santana says cheerfully, tipping her head back and looking from one of them to the other. "I missed the two of you clutching each other in the dark." She takes a sip of her drink and looks up again. "Rachel was crying a river, Quinn, you were civilized about it, but just as mushy on the inside, and the two of you probably decided at some point that even Santana, yes, _even Santana, _she whose name is an anagram and then some for Satan, would have been moved." She grins. "Am I right or am I right?" she asks, and without waiting for an answer, she launches herself out of the chair and strides over toward some guy saying, "Stevie! Hey, Stevie!"

Quinn and Rachel exchange glances, and then they both slide down into the chair at the same time. It's oversized, so there's room for them both, even if it's a little snug, and Quinn's thinking about the two of them clutching at each other in the dark, and trying to remember if she and Santana ever held hands during sad movies.

She thinks not. She thinks she was always alone with her diet soda, because Santana and Brittany were always holding onto the popcorn she never ate – and each other.

Rachel leans back against the chair and Quinn does the same. She turns her head and notes that Quinn's profile is close and blurry, says, "So you thought it was _amazing,_" - she grins - "with italics."

"_Yes_," Quinn says.

Rachel nods. "Right, right," she says, and completely matter-of-fact: "So I'm going to assume it's inspired you to start acting, singing, and dancing again."

Quinn smiles and sighs. "Actually," she says hesitantly, "I'm… already dancing."

Rachel's eyes widen and she sits forward and looks back. "I knew it!" she says, excitedly, "You did the fancy, spinny, lungey thing before and I _knew it!_"

Quinn blushes mildly. She looks down at her drink. "Well," she says, "I've only been doing it a little while," and she thinks it's been 6 weeks, actually, and she hasn't told a single person – not her mom – not Frannie – not Joe – not Mercedes even though she emailed and asked Quinn to tell her everything she was doing with herself. The only people in the whole world who know that Quinn Fabray is dancing again are her teacher, and Rachel Berry.

Rachel's telling her to tell her everything and so she does, and when Santana comes back and catches the tail end of the conversation she says, "Okay then, Ginger, show us some of your moves."

She turns around immediately and bellows "Stevie!" then turns back and smiles expectantly at Quinn and the dance floor and then back at Quinn.

Quinn rolls her eyes. "No," she mouths.

Santana rolls her eyes right back. "Okay," she says, "on the count of three, whoever finishes their drink first doesn't have to dance. One, two… "

Quinn gulps quickly and gets most of her drink down before she realizes Santana has beaten her, before she realizes Rachel's not even trying.

"Ahhh," Santana says, setting her glass down on the coffee table she's perched on, and Rachel thinks she sounds like a pirate, sips her drink and says in a small voice "I want to dance."

"Okay, okay, okay," Santana says. She stands up and ushers the guy named Stevie over to them. He has tall glasses of blue liquid with equally blue umbrellas in them. She hands the drinks out. "Whoever finishes their drink first gets to dance," she declares, and Quinn gulps hers down before she realizes she's directly contradicting herself, Rachel has a different shaped glass in each hand and is saying "Which one! Which one!" and Santana is looking down on both of them, sipping quietly with a smile and talking to her friend like the two of them are adults at a kids' party.

Quinn stops gulping. Rachel sighs, takes a sip of one drink and then the other and then again, and a third time. She says the blue one tastes kind of like cough syrup and Quinn says she's right and takes another sip.

Rachel frowns at her two drinks, considers. She lies back against the chair and holds them out in front of her and says, "Maybe I like cough syrup."

She lets the glasses rest on her thighs, wonders idly if they'd balance if she let go, thinks they probably wouldn't because her thighs aren't flat like a table. She already feels sleepy, and when Quinn leans back beside her she feels sleepier still. She wishes someone would take her drinks so she could just curl up and –

"Wakey, wakey," someone says, and suddenly that someone has taken her drinks, but they've taken her hand too, and Quinn's, and they're being dragged out onto the dance floor while Santana says "I know it's past your bedtime and all, but I didn't bring you down here for nothing."

She drags the two of them into the crowd and spins around, whispers close, "Eyes on me," and then she's gone, and as quickly as she's gone she's up on the stage and the band stops playing like someone pulled a cord out of a stereo.

Rachel blinks. She's not sure how Santana did it. It looked like she flew up there. There must be stairs and she must be very good at gliding. She blinks again and glances at Quinn, who glances back at her just as she turns away.

"What's going on?" Quinn asks, and Rachel says, "I have no idea!"

What's going on turns out to be that Santana is hijacking the spotlight.

She starts without the band, swinging her hips from side to side, and someone throws a feather boa at her and she catches it like she's done this a thousand times.

_Has she done this a thousand times? _Quinn wonders, and as Santana swings the boa in the air she remembers Rachel and the coconut bikini and _Yellow Bird, _and she closes her eyes, she opens them, she focuses.

Santana is singing, 'All That Jazz,' only not the song from Chicago, an old tune by Sammy Davis Jr, which is significantly less sexy, only perhaps not in this particular interpretation.

Quinn doesn't know any of this, or she wouldn't if Rachel wasn't telling her. She's standing on tip-toes with her hand on Quinn's shoulder, and Quinn's doing her best to lean down because she's too tall in these shoes, but it's still hard to hear, and she squints and nods and eventually Rachel stops trying to give her a history lesson in a nightclub, but she's still on tip-toes because it's hard to see over the people in front of them, and her hand is still on Quinn's shoulder.

Santana is amazing. Quinn would know this even if Rachel wasn't telling her (repeatedly). She feels a pang of jealousy, not because she thinks Santana is better than her exactly, although there's no denying she has a stronger voice. But Quinn has a pang of jealousy simply because she's so much better at showing how good she is. There's no fear, no restraint. She enthralls an unsuspecting audience. She commands the band, who eventually join in, muddling through as best they can, which is extraordinarily well, though Quinn wonders if Santana chose the song for a _Here's something I prepared earlier _reason. But the bottom line is that Santana has guts. And suddenly Quinn finds herself wondering how she was ever head Cheerio.

_When you're blonde and pretty and quite clever and rather talented and you know how to be polite when you need to be, you can get away with anything. _

She remembers thinking that. And it seems truer now than ever, when Santana bends back and flips her body forward again on _The skin I love to touch – too much! _and Rachel covers her mouth with her hand and giggles and says _Oh my god, Quinn! _or something that sounds the same.

Her smile is wide out of the corner of Quinn's eye, and her hand drops down from her mouth to rest at her chest. It's something like heaving.

Quinn sways slightly. She can't tell if it's on purpose or not. Rachel's grip on her shoulder tightens and Santana lifts her arms high and sings, _Oh baby what you've got, nobody has… and I've got you… and all that jazz, _and Quinn can't help wondering: what is _all that jazz… _exactly what is it if it's all the rest, and when is all the rest going to happen?

She frowns. Santana's singing gibberish now and nothing makes sense.

Rachel is having less complicated thoughts. Her reaction consists mostly of externalities: mad giggles and a tendency to jump up and down on her toes, and most especially, an irresistible urge she _must _resist at all costs to push through the crowd and try to fly up onto the stage too.

She always wants to do that – she always wants to steal someone's thunder, like she's some kind of street urchin who needs that crust of bread to survive. And normally she would – steal the thunder-crust – but the fact is that she's not sure she'd be able to steal Santana's – not in this context. For one thing, her dress isn't short enough. For another, her hips work as a single unit. And most importantly, she's the kind of girl the barman gives Shirley Temples to.

She doesn't care though. She's too excited to care. She turns to Quinn and says, "I don't care," with a smile on her face, and she's glad that Quinn can't hear, because she just now realized that nothing that just happened in her head was part of a conversation. She strains on tip-toes, peers above big hair and a fedora.

Suddenly there's an unexpected lull in the music, and Santana grabs the pianist by the hand and pulls him out to dance with her. She drags him comically across the stage in a silent tango he's not quite smiling about, steals the bassist's hat on her way, drapes the boa over the saxophonist, then sings, a capella –_ I got you - _right up in the pianist's face – and then to the audience – _And all that jaaaaaazzzzzzzz!_

The final note rings out, and then suddenly she's across the stage, and she's flying again, Rachel thinks, straight into the pianist's arms, and she gasps when he catches her, and he gasps too, and as he spins her around and _laughs, _and the other musicians play a final echoed strain, like they're catching up, and she thinks that if this is staged, they've really done an excellent job of making it seem like it's not. She hoists herself up to Quinn's ear and asks her if she thinks it's staged and Quinn says, "Almost certainly," and shakes her head and smiles, and then in no time the pianist is back in his seat, and Santana is gripping a microphone she's previously ignored and leaning into it lovingly, all Elvis-like, singing soft and coy, _You aint nothin' but a hound dog, cryyyyyin' all the time…_

Both Quinn and Rachel have the distinct impression that she's staring straight at them.

She gets through maybe a third of the song before bellowing all of a sudden, "_Stop!_" and cutting the air with her hands. Then she smiles politely, beseechingly, sweetly, says, "Ladies, fellas, I'm not gonna sing anymore…"

She pauses with a grin, waits for the obligatory _Aww _from the crowd and it comes without delay.

"You know why?" she asks, to quieten them, and "You know why?" again. Then she shrugs, tosses her hair, says, "It seems to me that when I sing,_ nobody,_" – a drumbeat, her hips swing to one side – "will _damn well,_" – another beat, her hips swing again – and then, a building roll as she shimmies from one side to the other, as she leaves the microphone behind, stalks to the front of the stage, and shrieks like an actual madwoman _"daaaaaaaaaaaaaance!"_

Then she's gone – into the crowd – and people are gasping, and the band pick up Hound Dog again, the pianist singing in his seat, and Santana's dancing from this man to the other, winking at their girlfriends on the way, and when she passes Quinn and Rachel she hisses _"Dance," _and before Quinn can stutter about it and say the drinking game wasn't fair, Rachel has taken both her hands and is swinging her around and laughing madly.

It's not long before they're mimicking the people around them, and Rachel's smaller so her hand ends up on Quinn's shoulder, she's the one who spins around under their arms more often than not – it's _hilarious _when she tries to do the same for Quinn, they nearly end up on the _floor - _but Rachel's also Rachel, so she's the one who leads, pushing and pulling them around the dance-floor, nudging Quinn's toes with hers and making apologies unheard, and wherever they go Quinn worries they're going to smack into somebody, but somehow they never do.

This is delightful. Rachel is _delighted. _She never got to do as much of this as she would have liked in Glee, which she will acknowledge is partly down to the fact that Mike would pick Brittany, Tina, Santana, Quinn or Kurt for his partner before he'd pick her, but which she always felt was also wholly down to the fact that her voice was the star of any show, and anyone who says you can sing like she does whilst engaging in aerobic exercise of any kind has obviously never heard her sing like she does. She thought she'd get the chance to do this kind of thing at NYADA, but it turns out that first years don't get partners – it's all lonely plies and unsupported pirouettes – _messy_ unsupported pirouettes, Rachel acknowledges dolefully – it's all stomach crunches and lunges and struggling to get her leg past ninety degrees with her knee straight.

Dancing at NYADA is punishment, and she thinks, as she ducks under Quinn's arm and is abruptly pulled back to her side, that dancing in this smoky little Soho club is not.

The song changes without seeming to, and it's a trick – Quinn knows it's a trick – it's specially designed to not give anybody a way out – it's specially designed to keep everybody dancing till they're so parched they buy the bar out – or, she thinks more charitably, till they're so _happy _they'll never want to leave – and also buy the bar out.

She's happy. She's happy this is so easy. She's happy nobody expects her to do what the couples who've migrated to the stage are doing. She's pretty sure she could lift Rachel – she's small, Quinn has guns, et cetera – but she's at least as sure she'd drop her if she tried to swing her backwards over her head.

She thinks, without quite being aware of it, _This is an extreme sport, _as Rachel snakes her arm around her body and smiles up close.

Quinn blinks rapidly, like a quiver, like the fluttering of butterfly wings. The sound distorts. She feels like she's underwater all of a sudden, or like somebody has wrapped her head in cotton wool. Rachel's still dancing and somehow Quinn's body is still dancing with her, but her mind is flying away _in the sky away, _and she reminds herself soothingly that there were not one but _two _shots of vodka in her Shirley Temple, and god knows what else in the blue drink of doom.

She's a little drunk, that's all. That's what she thinks, but it doesn't help. And just when she's starting to panic – there are knots in her stomach being tugged on like the reigns on a horse when you want him to stop, there are loud voices that aren't calling her name, she knows they are not, Rachel's hip disappears under one hand, reforms under the other – just as Quinn is starting to really panic, the rhythm slows, the sound drops, and she thinks she can hear again. She thinks she can see straight. She thinks she's aware of her brain operating her body.

Someone is crooning soft nonsense into a microphone, the cymbals are rustling dimly, a saxophone climbs a gentle slope, Rachel laughs loudly in her ear, and Quinn closes her eyes.

Then suddenly she's being led away from the dance floor and set down in one of the many empty chairs now available. Rachel is hauling another one closer, with great exertion, and then she sits down and wipes sweat from her brow like you would if you were miming it – except she's really not – the two of them are pretty well drenched – and Quinn worries in the back of her mind about her poor dress, she worries about Rachel's dress too, and searches the fabric for sweat stains, she smiles, Rachel is holding her hair off her neck and fanning herself, there's a bead of liquid trickling down her collarbone and her lips are puffed out as she exhales, and Quinn tries to sit up in her seat, fails, says something she doesn't hear and will not remember.

"Are you okay?" Rachel asks, and Quinn nods limply. She asks, "Are you?"

"Yeah," Rachel says softly, with a thoughtful kind of look on her face. She knows it must be thoughtful because she is thinking – about Quinn and whether she's really okay – about whether she should get her some water – about whether she should take her home – about whether she should ask her to repeat what she said a moment ago.

She swallows hard, drops her hair, turns away, closes her eyes and tries to replay the sound of it.

_You are so lucky useful._

She knows that isn't right. She opens her eyes and smiles without meaning to. She stumbles out of her chair and goes over to the bar.

The smile gets wider when she's on her own.


End file.
